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Letters and punctuation are not icons at all. They are symbols. Icons are images, i.e. likenesses of concrete or abstract objects which they refer to. Letter
by gkya 9y ago
Letters and punctuation are not icons at all. They are symbols. Icons are images, i.e. likenesses of concrete or abstract objects which they refer to. Letters have no meaning on their own, they represent sounds, which differ based on language (e.g. c sound like see, chee, key, gee, that &c in different languages) or its position in a word (caps, ace, click).
And if its not an abuse of fonts to use them as icon packs, its an abuse of the users who wants to use their bandwidth for better things (e.g. cat gifs). I have them disabled and my day is full of fun: What this "f" means? What happens when I click "ff" or "p" or what not? And some are kind enough to provide alt texts, which is soooo helpful: https://imgur.com/cHdSxcO https://imgur.com/cHdSxcO
- matthewmacleod 9y agoOkay, I was being a bit facetious, I admit :) In practice I don't consider it an anti-pattern to include icons in fonts. Fonts are designed in such a way that they're pretty convenient to use for icons. There are of course other approaches now available, and they should probably be used preferentially. But it's much like complaining here that you have blocked images, and therefore can't see any images. It's your choice, and I'm glad you have it, but…
- jameskegel 9y agoI'm curious what benefits would be evident while using a font that also combines icons in its character space. I can only imagine slight drawbacks.
- omg_ketchup 9y agoI feel like this is a bad trade... let me break every website I visit, so I don't have to download Font Awesome and Material Icons? Why would you do that to yourself? What's the benefit? A couple KB?