I just wanted to plug Icomoon ( https://icomoon.io/ ) -- They will let you assemble your own custom font icon set using subsets of public glyphs such as FA, and your own SVG images. I Hope this helps someone.
I use icomoon and it is definitely helpful but I must say the UX for creating icon sets is quite scary to use. Clicking on an icon by default removes or adds it to the icon set, so its incredibly easy to exclude an icon you are using already (meaning next time you publish your font, that icon will no longer render on your page)
Yeah, I've done this countless times, only realising once I have packaged it into my project. I ended up creating a Webpack loader which takes a small JSON file and creates an icon set for my project. I could consider releasing it on Github if there is interest in something like this?
I've been using Fort Awesome for 6 months and I'd highly recommend them. For $50/year it's a steal.
My favorite workflow is grabbing an svg icon from Noun Project, modifying it in Illustrator until it suits my needs, copying it (Cmd + C), and pasting it directly into the Fort Awesome import box.
This has all the benefits of generating svgs on your own with very little downside. It's saved me a lot of time and it makes turning an app design into a finished product a much faster process.
You should be able to extract the SVG really easily from the fontawesome-webfont.svg file, and colorize those with simple css e.g. fill: #ff0; The svg font file contains SVG path elements as glyph elements.
In light of what I said, why is SVG support "Pro" feature?
We're doing a lot more than just SVG support. Our goal is to make them as easy to use as icon fonts. That means you can auto-inherit color, size, drop-shadow, etc. And more.
(And the SVG font file format automatically flips the icons. So you'd need to invert. TOTALLY doable, if with a good bit of effort.)
But how often do people share attributes between fonts and icons? And how often do you need to inherit attributes that way?
I'm not sure why an icon font would be easier to use than SVGs. Yes, you only have to reference a file once (the font file), but that actually makes it more difficult to use, because now you have to remember two things: how to reference the file, and how to reference the icon.
With SVG, it's simpler, because everything is usually contained in one CSS rule. Yes, it has a reference to a file, but does that matter from the viewpoint of simplicity? I.e., make another icon? Then just copy a CSS rule and edit it.
Also, using an icon font makes it difficult to substitute a single icon by another icon. Suddenly, you have to start rearranging your CSS. With SVGs not so: just edit the referenced url.
Anyway, I love the font-awesome graphics. Except for a few icons, such as icons containing people (they look too bulky and inelegant, for my taste). But most icon-sets don't get people-icons right.
I parse my CSS file (I embed content:"\f..." strings instead of fa-... classes) to see what I'm actually using and then hack up the font file to only include those characters.
Knox Avenue out of Los Angeles. Imagine getting a Sandwich Video made before they were astronomically expensive.
Ping me over email and I'll make an intro. Amazingly talented and honestly my favorite human beings I've met in the past month. CANNOT recommend them highly enough.
I haven't worked with this agency specifically, but it depends on a variety of factors - e.g. # of animations, actors/actresses, reshoots, reviews, etc. and how in-demand the agency is. It can usually run you low to mid six figures.
If I understand, Font Awesome paid >$100'000 for a video, in order to ask for $30'000 on kickstarter? Or do you think that this video was cheaper? (good will because of the open source nature of the project, or some other factor)
Font Awesome Free isn't going anywhere. Re-design is largely due to changing the base size to 16px which requires a re-design to keep pixel-perfection.
Thanks. Remaking all of FA Free sounds like a lot of work for little benefit, but I imagine it makes sense in the light of all the extra icons you're adding to Pro.
Honestly, the grid system in 4 is quite inconsistent, especially with vertical centering. But that happens over time with an open source project. Things wander each commit.
Been jonesing to start over for a while. Super excited.
I had submitted an issue about the removal of the non-identifying direct CDN link to FontAwesome in favor of a user-identifying JavaScript embed, and it was closed. I tagged in to another issue to make the same point,
Still no answer. Am I the only one that cares that the current state of FontAwesome encourages tying your email address (via a unique token) to your site's specific FontAwesome usage?
Me too! I was all about FontAwesome for a while, then I discovered http://iconmonstr.com (which has far more icons), and now I just use the SVGs from there for everything.
The implementation with the :before class definitely qualifies as a bit of a hack. No question.
Some of the icons themselves represent something of a universal language for websites. Using those symbols in a typeface is similar in some ways to character based languages like Japanese or Chinese. So I might argue that icons as fonts are quite an appropriate use.
The compelling feature of icon fonts over svg used to be IE8 support.
But then there was IE9 mobile, which didn't support @font-face. I remember coding detection for that, and creating a script that automatically generates png versions and the required CSS of the glyphs in use. Sigh.
I work for a corporate. A South African based company with inroads' in England and the USA. Should I donate in my personal capacity or ask the company to contribute?
Yes, we use fa on our front-end projects.
The licenses follow the person or organization. If it's for a personal project, then you'd want to have one. If for the company, then the company would want one. :)
I haven't been following this space in a while. Can you shed some light on why the sizes are changing from 14px to 16px? On the kickstarter page it says it says the new size matches Bootstrap 4's global font size; is that the sole reason? (Edit: this was partially answered since but I'm curious)
I wonder, is traditional incremental versioning appropriate for what users perceive as a 100% stylistic change (notwithstanding the immense effort of a full rewrite of its internals). Do you intend to enhance Font Awesome 4 after the release of 5, or is 4 going to be EOL?
It has been 16px as default for as long as I can remember. People designed at 12-14px and it has been trending larger, 18-22px, for quite some time now - at least since 2012-2013. I think larger screen sizes plays a big part in the change, or maybe marketing people realized people dislike small text/prefer larger text? :)
Coders have learned that it's best to not touch the default font size, or resize html/body font size. The ugly 62.5% (16-->10px) is also dying out for accessibility reasons.
I'm a huge fan of Font Awesome and have been a user of it for years. I'm quite excited for the new version, and am proud to pledge for the development of FA5!
Any idea why there's no FA icon(s) to represent police, sirens, badges? Anything relating to civil authorities? (well, I guess there's some fire stuff).
Oh hey, thanks! It was not a complaint, but I wasn't sure if perhaps there were other factors (concern about representing life-saving activities via your icons, for example).
There are some security apps a family member is working on, and having some more related icons would help make his app better. We were talking about it this morning, and then this post arrived.
They are calling it pro as I imagine their other offshoot didn't work or make any money. It was that black bar at the top of the screen each time you go to the site. This makes sense, but maybe they shouldn't have tried to name it something different in the first place.
I just wonder how licensing for the pro version works in regards to open source projects? If I buy the license, can I use it for my open source project?
Also the option to commission your own icon is really exciting! :-)
I'd say just don't put the commercial version in a public code repo where other folks could easily use it. But if you avoid that, open souce projects would definitely qualify for our $20 non-profit license.
And Font Awesome 5 Free will be pretty awesome too. Your pick.
The Font Awesome Pro Business license (40USD) is more expensive than the Student license (20 USD). However, if you are an early backer for the Business license, you can get it at 20 USD.
Why are they running a Kickstarter if they actually have a "PRO" business model thing going? Shouldn't they just focus on building their business, instead of raising money? The video is cool-hip-quirky but... I don't get why they need to stick out their hands and ask for a handout here.
1. Using Kickstarter as a way to give PRO users a discount on their normal $40 rate.
2. Using Kickstarter as a way to market/announce their new business model.
If that's indeed why they are doing this as a Kickstarter then its a pretty great way to use Kickstarter, imho!
I think the point was that they are asking for $$$ by having a "Free vs. Pro" business model (i.e. people pay $$$ for Pro), so where does the need for a Kickstarter campaign come from?
Because to have the free stuff, you need to dev it. To dev it, you need money to eat while you dev. So they ask money to live now, while they can code the free stuff.
When you have a "Free vs. Pro" model, you usually structure it so that the Free version is subsidized by the money from the Pro version. So I don't think it's outrageous to be confused by someone having such a model, and yet still needing a Kickstarter campaign.
That's not to say there is something wrong with it. It just seems confusing at face value.
I'm not really sure why the idea is such a foreign concept to the point where you need to insinuate that I think that Free software "falls from the sky" or some such nonsense.
Because it causes burnout. You can't write open-source software as your primary day job well. There's too much risk.
You can, however, do it as a function of your work for your employer. Almost all of today's viable FOSS started like this, because it provides the financial security and moral support you need to bring a FOSS to maturity.
Good thing they're selling a product then, not asking for a handout. And hey, as a bonus, they're releasing a fully refreshed set of icons for free!
Your perspective on what open-source can/should be is utterly unrecognizable to me. I'm glad it seems like the majority of people are finally getting comfortable with the idea that you shouldn't have to choose between making a living and contributing to the open source ecosystem.
As I write this I see 92,108 reasons why they did this, plus a lot of us talking about it. It simply works for some projects and they took the chance that it would work for theirs, and if it didn't, it would of just cost them some time and whatever that video cost them.
Because —like many Kickstarters— they want paying for their time before they do the work.
I'm sure they don't need to do that but if you've already got the following to allow it, why not take the opportunity to ramp up the buzz?
It also puts some focus on the much-ignored professional versions. Most people have been happy to use the free versions. This draws attention to the fact that designing things takes time and that is worth something.
This "pro" version is different than the one they offer on their site. Pro Font Awesome VS Pro Fort Awesome. Fort Awesome already includes many of the features in Font Awesome 5.
I reckon this is pure promotion. That video was pretty slick and I doubt it cost less than $30,000 to produce – writer, camera crew, actors, director, lighting, bakers, etc.
They totally lost me when the video announced a PRO version. Sorry, you can't claim to be open source while a few seconds later showing a paid-for version. Shame.
Exactly. It's really having your cake and eating it too.
They need to choose between:
1) If you're gonna raise money, then release all your work for free. No "premium" icons.
2) If you're gonna have a freemium-premium model, then don't have a fundraiser and get others to underwrite your risks.
Not sure why you are being downvoted but I agree with you. I wouldn't mind if the pro version was for the assorted "addon" packs and I'd definitely contribute to the project even without using it ever, but making it the pro having a different set of icons from the free one is kinda chilling. Guess I will just stick with Material Design Icons.
So you created your HN account an hour ago for the only purpose of complaining about a product which is best of class and being offered to you for free?
The difference between using a web font and using SVG is primarily that you do not break the underlying assumptions of usability software, primarily one that a font contains actual information to be parsed. An SVG icon is not going to cause a screen reader to say 'Unpronounceable'. A web font is going to do this. Among other things.
The web-font icon, if tagged with aria-hidden="true" (as suggested on the accessibility page) will not be read by any modern screen readers.
Additionally, if the web-font icon is representing meaningful information the span with a class of "sr-only" allows you to represent the icon in a meaningful way to users requiring a screen reader.
Please, read the accessibility page that has been linked to you. You're saying things that are flatly untrue.
So untrue that I actually had to spend time correcting this on a project already to avoid your massive CSS bloat and to properly support someone's reader. World class, indeed.
This project is something that people spent a long time creating, they put in a lot of hard work and they offered it to you for free. They obviously do care a lot about accessiblity, it's evident from their website. If you found a problem with a particular screen reader, did you open a github issue? What was the name of the software? Did you follow all of the accessibility guidelines? Did you engage with the authors and ask them for help? Or did you simply register a new HN account with which to insult and diminish the hard work that these people gave to you in good faith and for free?
Still no Node.js or npm icons after almost 3 years?
Thanks but no thanks.
-- Edit: not trying to be sarcastic or blaming anyone. I'm saying what I feel about Font-Awesome. If you don't like my thoughts, you just have to live with that. As a member of the community, I guess I also have rights to ask for something, which I do, and I guess I also have all the rights to talk about something that I've been waiting for, for a long time.
Thanks for the downvotes. I hope you can ever understand what was written in the future before downvoting it.
"I guess I also have rights to ask for something, which I do, and I guess I also have all the rights to talk about something that I've been waiting for, for a long time."
Yes, you do. You can also ask for it in a reasonable way instead of being a dick, which led to the downvotes in combination with your excessive arrogance in the edits. This isn't that hard to figure out.
No, I didn't say that. But in any case, there's no actual use for the whole library besides from some specific cases.
So, I need around 10 of them most of the time and 2 of the ones that I need are not there yet. I guess you can imagine the situation now.
Would the old method of a bunch of small png files in a directory work much better, now that HTTP/2 is here?