XF 2.2 When will we get FontAwesome 6 support?

[Stuart Wright]

Fontawesome 6 has some useful icons and I’d like to use one of them (slider-flip).
But there are some changes.

<i class="far fa-alarm-clock"></i>

in FA5 vs

<i class="fa-regular fa-alarm-clock"></i>

in 6.

Is FA6 support in the pipeline?

 

[bzcomputers]

It would be nice to be able to use the new x-twitter font-awesome icon () without a lot of hassle. I would assume a lot of sites like me are still using the old one.

Font-awesome just make it easier with coloring, resizing, etc., it's not simple to add in an external image (.svg or other) and get it to look the same as existing font awesome icons within the site if custom attributes have been applied..

 

[EchoRomeo]

But loosely speaking I’d expect it would involve replacing the existing web fonts we ship, the existing Less variables we ship and the existing CSS that we ship.

This isn’t really something we can support you with other than directing you towards the existing code and files that make FA5 work and tell you that it’s those that hold the clues, along with the FA6 documentation, that would perhaps enable you to retrofit FA6 in place of FA5.

Thanks Chris, really appreciate the info! It sounds like FA6 compatibility really depends on add-on developers taking the initiative to create code that bridges the gap between subscribing to FA Pro and getting access in XF. Have any add-on developers considered making such an add-on (e.g., @Kirby)?

To put it another way, we cannot ever guarantee we’ll use anything other than FA5 for the foreseeable future and, personally, I’m very happy with that. It’s a good set of icons that is incredibly comprehensive and should be capable of meeting our needs for years to come.

I agree, FA5 is very comprehensive and I'm happy with it too. But I think you'll agree that everyone's use case is different and there are sites that could benefit from having access to FA6's additional ~12,000 icons. If you use a large variety of graphics/icons on your site, then it makes sense that upgrading to FA6 would be desirable. Like a lot of features available on XF, FA6 probably isn't needed by the majority of users but could provide substantial benefit to the minority that apply FA more heavily.

 

[Forsaken]

The short answer is: we don’t know what’s involved.

We haven’t explored FA6 as it’s not currently viable for us to provide due to there not being an appropriate license that would allow it to ship with XF.

But loosely speaking I’d expect it would involve replacing the existing web fonts we ship, the existing Less variables we ship and the existing CSS that we ship.

This isn’t really something we can support you with other than directing you towards the existing code and files that make FA5 work and tell you that it’s those that hold the clues, along with the FA6 documentation, that would perhaps enable you to retrofit FA6 in place of FA5.

All I would say is that 2.3 almost certainly will change the approach you need to take, so weigh up carefully whether it’s something that’s worthwhile investing time in now.

To put it another way, we cannot ever guarantee we’ll use anything other than FA5 for the foreseeable future and, personally, I’m very happy with that. It’s a good set of icons that is incredibly comprehensive and should be capable of meeting our needs for years to come.

I would love to see XenForo support Iconify by @Arty (or take their own similar approach).

 

[Chris D]

View attachment 291150

It’s not something we have consciously tried to do. But, potentially. I’ll ping @Jeremy P to comment vaguely on that if he wants to as he has worked on FA improvements for 2.3. I figure maybe it’s somewhat shimmable more easily than currently but I’m not 100% certain.

BTW, I’ve contacted the team at FA pretty much annually for the last couple of years to see if we can figure out terms for FA6 but it’s sadly not something they seem enthusiastic about currently.

 

[Jeremy P]

I think it should be straightforward to swap existing icons with their FA6 versions in 2.3, though as @Chris D notes this is mostly a consequence of other changes and not an explicit design decision. Using the new thin or sharp icon styles is not supported out of the box. I believe adding and using new FA6 icons to the existing styles should also work okay, but I have not tested to be sure.

 

[Empty]

Reviving this thread... So I understand that if you subscribe to Font Awesome Pro you get all the Pro icons. Could someone explain how, if you do subscribe, you actually go about integrating with XenForo? Would you have to modify the font_awesome_setup template or something? Is there a setting in the ACP that lets you load stuff like that in?

Font Awesome Pro is $99. Like everyone else I'm reticent to pay that for just icons...

View attachment 291111

It mentions, though, that the Pro membership gives you five licenses for $99...I'd probably be willing to pay $20 for one license. Is this something that people can pool resources for (e.g., someone buys it and I send them $20 to get access for a year)? Excuse my ignorance, just thinking out loud about whether something like that might be workable...

I did this on my website, they do provide tutorials upon purchase for how to implement. Was relatively simple but I can't recall exactly. I also never renewed, and haven't lost any access to the icons. It was honestly worth it for a one time purchase, for me and my projects, but I think most would be better off getting icons elsewhere by other means. Does not integrate with any add-ons or icon selectors, so it's only useful if you are willing to hard code in the icons via css/html.

To see the ability for those with an FA6 license to be able to more smoothly integrate FA6 into Xenforo would be amazing. I understand this is a limited group though.