Font Awesome 6 / Subsetter in XF 2.2?

[frm]

Will XF 2.2 include a pro license of Font Awesome 6 or will it stick with 5.x?

An additional feature of FA6, that people gripe about is the file size of FA icons, is solved with FA6. With the newer version, there's (a beta) Subsetter program to only include icons you use and not all 7000+, slowing down a site.

Speed up your site by creating a super-lean, super-fast version of Font Awesome! Choose just the icons you need then serve them up as a subset on your site or app to make it faster than ever.

Source: https://fontawesome.com/how-to-use/on-the-desktop/other-topics/subsetter

Unsure if this is a pre-sales question or general XF 2.2 question not raised. Please feel free to move to the appropriate forum if this is the wrong place.

 

[Chromaniac]

Thats nice... But a lot of third party modifications also use the same font file... How would subsetter work if xenforo only ships with icons it uses.

 

[frm]

Thats nice... But a lot of third party modifications also use the same font file... How would subsetter work if xenforo only ships with icons it uses.

It would ship with everything as typical, but if admins (us) had access to the Subsetter as I think XF 2.1 has a pro license of FA5 (therefore it'd only make sense to ship with a pro version of FA6), we could replace the WOFF files to fit our site's specific needs, only if we could get Subsetter as well.

This would allow us to reduce the filesize from like 300kb~ to potentially ~30kb for the bare minimum fonts used. That would drastically improve the waterfall/response time, thus leading to a potentially better SERP/rank.

Edit: I misunderstood what you meant. But, XF has a lot more icons packed up that they don't use, but you can use. Take the BLOG icon for instance. You don't see it anywhere on the site, but you can use it if you want as it's included in the latest FA5 packed in XF 2.1.

.fad.@{fa-css-prefix}-blog:after { content: "\10f781"; }

 

[Russ]

I'm not sure they're honoring the FA5 Kickstarter licenses for FA6. FA6 pro may require individual purchase as I don't believe they offer a "theme license" anymore. Could be wrong though

 

[Chris D]

The subsetter is already a feature (though relatively new) of Font Awesome 5 Pro.

While we are able to include in XenForo 2.x the Font Awesome 5 Pro web-fonts as it stands as per the license we have with them, there are many pro features we cannot provide because they require per-domain registration or we're unable to redistribute that part.

For example, we cannot provide the Pro CDN because it requires per-site registration. We're unable to provide the Subsetter because we don't have a license that permits us to redistribute that.

In actual fact we're incredibly lucky that we're even able to provide Font Awesome 5 Pro. We supported them on Kickstarter at a time where they had something called a "Theme License" which allowed us to do what we currently do and we were very lucky that they made the decision to grandfather that license for existing license holders.

With all that in mind, what happens next very much depends on what license options are available for Font Awesome 6. At this particular moment in time - and we have started initial discussions - there is no variant of the Font Awesome 6 license that would be compatible.

I will take this opportunity to acknowledge the concerns about the file size of the included fonts (and CSS I should note). We don't necessarily have an immediate solution but we've heard the feedback.

In the meantime, there is nothing to stop sites from purchasing their own Font Awesome Pro subscription. Doing so in the near future will net you a 50% discount on a yearly subscription - $49 per year instead of $99 per year. This will give you all current Font Awesome 5 Pro benefits that we're unable to offer plus access to Font Awesome Pro 6 once it is available.

We will provide Font Awesome 6 Pro if we can, otherwise we will stick with Font Awesome 5 Pro indefinitely.

 

[frm]

I'm not sure they're honoring the FA5 Kickstarter licenses for FA6. FA6 pro may require individual purchase as I don't believe they offer a "theme license" anymore. Could be wrong though

I guess we have to wait for a response from the team as I thought XF came with a pro license...

Either way, the question would still remain if it ships with FA5.x like XF 2.1 does or will we get FA6 too.

If the case that it doesn't have a pro license and we can't have access to Subsetter, it's definitely something that I (and other style builders) should look into in order to minify the size.

 

[frm]

Posted at the same time, @Chris D.

Thank you for the detailed response with that and, hopefully, if it makes fiscal sense for XF, 2.2 can (possibly) ship later with FA6 as you've upgraded FA5 throughout XF2 and XF2.1 to include new icons in the FA5 set (including the BLOG one that I mentioned earlier ).

 

[Chromaniac]

now wondering if using this resource is violating the license or something. it's pretty neat and does what this thread desires. but of course results in a warning in backend. and the post also sort of answers why xenforo does not point to the cdn itself. sharing the cdn resource would at least solve the first load problem for some people who are active on xenforo hosted communities.

Unmaintained - Reduce FontAwesome icon font file size

NOTICE This add-on will no longer be maintained as a better solution for reducing your FontAwesome file sizes has been published by @Kirby here. I would strongly suggest using his add-on instead...

xenforo.com

 

[ŽivaAkcija]

so new era of XF its ready?

 

[Russ]

I guess we have to wait for a response from the team as I thought XF came with a pro license...

Either way, the question would still remain if it ships with FA5.x like XF 2.1 does or will we get FA6 too.

If the case that it doesn't have a pro license and we can't have access to Subsetter, it's definitely something that I (and other style builders) should look into in order to minify the size.

I just don't see supporting this on a style level as a good approach. Without looking into the license issues, each forum runs different icons due to add-ons, custom bbcodes and other personal choices. The second I release a style with only the icons required out of the box, the tickets start rolling in asking why X icon isn't showing requiring a custom subset.

 

[frm]

I just don't see supporting this on a style level as a good approach. Without looking into the license issues, each forum runs different icons due to add-ons, custom bbcodes and other personal choices. The second I release a style with only the icons required out of the box, the tickets start rolling in asking why X icon isn't showing requiring a custom subset.

That does make sense and something that style editors, such as yourself, could potentially consider by packaging a 'Subsetter' add on to disable icons used in styles, reducing the filesize of CSS and WOFF files.