

Cross-platform emoji solution - mwunsch
http://mwunsch.tumblr.com/post/34721548842/we-need-to-talk-about-emoji

======
acdha
This seems completely backwards to me:

> Do not store emoji unicodes in your database. Store the human-friendly code
> and support the emoji-cheat-sheet.

I would strongly recommend doing the reverse: store and use standard Unicode
throughout your application. If you want support on browsers which do not
support Unicode 6 properly, use JavaScript or a web font to substitute the
characters in question so you don't need to update every bit if text you've
ever stored or displayed when e.g. Chrome lands emoji support in a few
releases.

This approach avoids having to fix your proprietary encoding scheme later and
also means that less popular user agents automatically get support as soon as
they add it.

~~~
mwunsch
I agree in principal, but in practice no such font is widely available. The
emoji cheat sheet has emerged because a desire to use emoji exists, but both
input and display are not well supported. The solution I propose, albeit
imperfect, works today to display emoji input to those who would not otherwise
see it.

~~~
acdha
There is at least one open font (Symbola) with emoji support and I thought
Ubuntu had been adding support at some point recently.

More to the point, however, you could take the symbols you would have to
create either way and package them as a web font - which would only be
downloaded on devices without a better choice - or simply make your JavaScript
do a simple search and replace on the Unicode character values to substitute
the same HTML markup you'd need either way. Again, you could do a client side
detection for this to avoid any overhead on browsers with support.

------
stanleydrew
> GitHub introduced emoji pngs throughout their application, and pull requests
> are much better for it. Campfire supports emoji, and your professional
> interactions are much better for it.

I think I disagree. I'm trying to think of a situation in which a pull request
or a campfire chat with emoji has ever made my life better, and I just can't.

~~~
epic9x
Agreed, the use of emoji or the occasional ";D" is a measure of how informal
the communication is, and isn't something that'll help improve the
professional tone interacting with a client. I personally don't think it has
much place in business communication at all, but that's just my personal
preference.

If you can't communicate successfully without emoji, then you have a large
communication problem that is likely not being solved by their addition.

edit: for clarity.

------
nextstep
Why can't Chrome just fix its text rendering to use the system fonts? Emoji
works natively in OS X, but not in Chrome.

~~~
timb
seems like that issue is being worked on:
<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=62435>

Chrome has similar problems on Windows. For example, the Mathematical
Alphanumeric Symbols work in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and even Notepad, but
not in Chrome.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Alphanumeric_Symbo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Alphanumeric_Symbols)
<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=109844>

------
laurentoget
why oh why would anybody want to have any piece of text looking like my
little's brother 1993 geocities webpage, and why do we need to clutter text
encoding with this?

if you want to put pictures in your text, just put pictures in your text. html
has allowed you to do this since its inception.

------
dasony
Any chance Apple, Github, or Campfire have their emoji png icons available for
download? (with a good license?) If not, what would be a nice set of emoji
png's I can use for my website?

~~~
SnowLprd
You will most likely find all the emoji you'll ever need or want at:
<http://www.emoji-cheat-sheet.com/>

~~~
splitbrain
[https://github.com/arvida/emoji-cheat-
sheet.com/blob/master/...](https://github.com/arvida/emoji-cheat-
sheet.com/blob/master/LICENSE) doesn't look good. All rights reserved is not
an open license at all and makes me question the legality of that repository.

~~~
ville
Github also has a repository for their icons at
<https://github.com/github/gemoji/> They have the same licence.

------
tomcam
i didn't know there was a cross-platform emoji problem

