

Font Awesome 4 released - trumbitta2
http://fontawesome.io/?4

======
skore
Seems like a lot of people don't like the namespaces changes. I actually
really like this! I suppose it's cumbersome even if you're building a project
where you have full control. Then again - come on, we're talking about
search&replace for 10 minutes here. And in more complex projects, you should
have had a flexible function to handle icons anyways.

Why I really, really like it: If you're building something in a namespace
polluted environment (say, a component for a popular CMS), this is a damn god-
send.

I was on the fence before, from now on, it's fontawesome all the way for all
my projects. They've done an amazing job so far and I'm looking forward to
what they will do next.

~~~
fortawesome
It's also customizable in the LESS or SCSS as a variable. Want to go back to
the icon-* prefix? No problem.

~~~
skore
Well thanks for reminding me how profoundly lazy I am ;-)

And hey: Again, kudos!

------
ris
What I see on that page: one hell of a lot of unicode placeholders and not
much else.

We don't all agree with a site's font choices.

And at least img made an attempt at semantic meaning and accessibility with
alt= attributes. The failure modes for img are actually quite good. There's no
such concern in the minds of those who gave birth to icon fonts.

~~~
yackob03
Ligature symbols actually addresses this. there just aren't enough of them for
my needs.

[http://kudakurage.com/ligature_symbols/](http://kudakurage.com/ligature_symbols/)

~~~
ris
I must admit that's actually quite a cool solution.

I'm still not totally convinced by font abuse though.

------
leeoniya
370 icons is nice, but what i really want is a tool that lets me put together
a smaller subset from multiple icon fonts that only has what my app needs. A
global font-icon library from which to assemble this subset would be ideal.

These collections are trying to cater to everyone by growing in size when the
better solution here is a modularizer.

~~~
jgj
[http://icomoon.io/app](http://icomoon.io/app)

~~~
elpool2
Icomoon is great, I've been using it for a while now. I find it's pretty easy
to create my own icons in inkscape and then upload them to icomoon and add
them to my custom icon font.

------
davewiner
They renamed the icons. They don't just break apps when they do that, they
break users. At some point things like the names of icons should be frozen. I
love Font Awesome of course. But please!

~~~
fortawesome
This is why it is a major release. It breaks compatibility for the sake of
moving forward.

~~~
hcho
Could we not move forward without changing the namespace. Serious question.

~~~
nwienert
No, they were changed for performance reasons which is a needed and important
improvement:

[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-
Awesome/issues/568](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/568)

------
RBerenguel
As much as I like having them for my projects (but I see no reason to get v4
instead of keeping v3), still no temperature (thermometer) nor sparklines
(graph.)

~~~
jwarren
I feel like this is outside of Font Awesome's remit.

~~~
RBerenguel
I don't know why it is. A spark-like graph is useful for many use-cases (graph
or bars? plot this, draw lines), and even more a thermometer-like icon
(weather, medicine.) The thermometer has been hanging around the issues for a
while also (or so I think from last time I checked.) I'd like to have all my
icons in one basket, and I like the look of Font Awesome's. So missing these 2
is a little aesthetic pain.

------
ihsw
Oh for heaven's sake, why is icon-* being deprecated? I stopped using
Glyphicons _because_ they switched to glyphion-* .

~~~
fortawesome
It's customizable in the LESS or SCSS.

~~~
ihsw
That's quite good.

------
pallandt
If you're looking for good looking icon fonts, don't forget to check out
Entypo as well([http://entypo.com/](http://entypo.com/)). Not as many options
as Font Awesome, but they do look really good/much better than other free
alternatives or even paid ones.

------
thekingshorses
Is this better than [http://icomoon.io/app](http://icomoon.io/app)?

I can create my own font file with icomoon so it only contains the icons that
I needed for my site. Only issue I have is that there is no way to save the
created font file so that I can modify later.

~~~
jwarren
It's different. Icomoon is brilliant for creating a preset group of icons
which will be used in a predictable way. But sometimes, especially during
prototyping, you don't know which icons you'll want. Just being able to
include a pretty thorough library which renders consistently and gives you a
decent level of control is a nice weight off your mind. It would be nice to
have a subsetting tool, but imo that's what Icomoon's for.

Btw, you can save fonts in Icomoon - just click on the save icon in the bottom
right and it'll save a settings json file which can be reimported.

~~~
thekingshorses
I can save my settings in JSON but that is not ideal as I have to keep track
of that. It would be better if site saves that on the server.

~~~
j_s
Then pay the $9/month?

[http://icomoon.io/#premium](http://icomoon.io/#premium)

------
usaphp
I wish they post a link to the previous version's icons page, most of my
websites are using font awesome v3, and I dont see a way to quickly find an
old icon classes right now, unless somebody can help me out with that?

~~~
jazz
You can find it at
[http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/)

~~~
usaphp
Great tip, is there a link on the current homepage? So that other people can
also get a quick access to it?

------
applecore
There are ten new icons, but still no database icon :(

[http://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-
Awesome/issues/139](http://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/139)

------
manishsharan
I love Font Awesome though I do not understand why they have to claim "The
iconic font designed for Bootstrap" \--- I have managed to use Font Aweome
with Zurb Foundation and SASS and it works just fine.

~~~
zebra
Kind of brandjacking - but as it is free product I fail to see this as an ill
behavior.

~~~
fortawesome
Fair enough. Originally there was quite a bit of CSS to get it to play nice
with Bootstrap. Now, it should have more compatibility across the board with
all frameworks.

~~~
zebra
Clever move - every framework has or will have support for Bootstrap and Font
Awesome respectively. BTW Good job, I appreciate your effort.

------
sjs382
If you're like me and need access to the previous version's documentation, I'm
hosting it at
[http://fontawesome.http410.com](http://fontawesome.http410.com).

~~~
rschmitty
Thx, but it is also available
[http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/)

~~~
sjs382
Awesome. Mind if I ask how you found that?

I couldn't find a link to this, so I just forked the gh-pages repo.

~~~
taspeotis
It's not called out directly, but it's linked to from here [1].

[1] [http://fontawesome.io/get-started/](http://fontawesome.io/get-started/)

------
saravk
Anyone else having trouble with using the new 4.0 fonts from the Bootstrap
CDN?

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19549881/cdn-for-font-
awe...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19549881/cdn-for-font-
awesome-4-0-not-serving-font-files)

~~~
studiofellow
[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-
Awesome/issues/2193](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/2193)

Url should be /fonts, not /font.

In variables.less, change @fa-font-path to: "//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/font-
awesome/4.0.0/fonts"

------
thezilch
More speed? Looks to be from the following change:

[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-
Awesome/issues/568](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/568)

Any others?

------
jankins
I whipped up a FontAwesome 4.0 library for iOS:
[https://github.com/sweetmandm/FontAwesomeTools-
iOS](https://github.com/sweetmandm/FontAwesomeTools-iOS)

------
mixmastamyk
Is this the best font-icon set? Would anyone consider using more than one in a
project? Do you subset them?

I'm about to decide on one to use.

~~~
ahsteele
We use Font Awesome and have been incredibly happy. We augment the set with
our own SVGs and appropriately attributed ones from The Noun Project. There
are a variety of scripts and web sites available for packaging SVGs up so that
they can be used as a font.

------
arnley
I hoped for more than 10 icons :-( Any advice on how to "add" some other SVG
icons to the mix and generate the whole font package?

~~~
fortawesome
This update is about getting the CSS right. Cleaning it up, speeding it up,
making it leaner. More icons in future versions.

~~~
madoublet
Looking forward to it. Love FA.

------
pkill17
Try adding the 'fa-spin' class to any element type; entire <div>'s and
<section>'s start spinning.

------
Skoofoo
Good to see the Bitcoin icon making it in there.

------
philipwalton
In the what's new it says everything has been rewritten. Does this mean the
icon vector files themselves or just the CSS?

~~~
fortawesome
Just the CSS.

------
iambateman
So FontAwesome 4 isn't backwards compatible, right?

I wonder how _much_ faster it is.

~~~
fortawesome
We've been seeing as high as 30% in webkit. Hoping to write the findings up.
It's especially hard as pretty much every browser has killed off their CSS
profiler.

~~~
iambateman
30% is great! Font Awesome is sooo sick.

Btw, is there a cheatsheet for those of us using FA3 still? Or are all the old
icons interchangeable with "fa-" and "icon-"? Yes there is:
[http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/)

------
impostervt
Since icon names have changed, how do I find the documentation for the 3.x
version?

~~~
sjs382
I need access to the old docs too, so I decided to host them here:

[http://fontawesome.http410.com/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.http410.com/3.2.1/)

~~~
jazz
You can also access it there:
[http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/](http://fontawesome.io/3.2.1/)

------
gnagatomo
No more '[class^="icon-"], [class*=" icon-"]'! Yay!

------
neuling2k
nice! to learn the new icon-names try our (font)awesome game
[http://fontawesome.pro](http://fontawesome.pro)

------
wesley
No IE7 support any more it seems.

------
nvk
v4 And this still not really Open Source.

~~~
fortawesome
Uh, what are you talking about?

~~~
quarterto
I think they're referring to an article that made the rounds a few days ago
(can't remember which) that decried the requirement of Adobe Illustrator for
participation (citing as evidence the ratio of icon requests vs pull
requests).

~~~
fortawesome
I tried taking designs from other folks. The quality wasn't good enough, so I
stopped.

~~~
skore
Ah, so the old "you don't like my pull request, so I will tell people you're
not Open Source". Classic.

~~~
ceejayoz
Some people apparently think "open source" means "anyone can commit whatever
they like to the main repository", which is odd.

~~~
nvk
\- Can't do pull requests on the graphics. \- Can't download the svgs.

The only thing that is open source is the implementation.

~~~
ceejayoz
Can't do pull requests on the graphics?

[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-
Awesome/pull/1823](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/pull/1823)

Can't download the SVGs?

[https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-
Awesome/blob/master/font...](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-
Awesome/blob/master/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.svg)

------
gcb0
And history repeats itself.

A new generation of webdevelopers using Wingdings when designing pages in
Microsoft Frontpage.... sigh.

~~~
nijiko
Except it isn't required to have the font installed on _your_ system this time
around.

