Font Awesome version and features in Pro

The version of Font Awesome in Pro is based on Font Awesome 5 Pro, right? Are there plans to update the integration to include all the additional icons and icon styles that have been released since? There are other cool features like the duotone icons and the (currently in beta) icon wizard.

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Yes it is font awesome pro 5. At least that’s what the folder says. It doesn’t seem to look any different from the free version so I’ll have to check internally if that’s a licensing thing. Icon wizard is looking very cool, duotone was available in 5 it just doesn’t look like we include it. Have a great day!

I’d second the request to update font awesome if possible

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Thirded too. FA 6 is already out there.

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Yet another request to please support Font Awesome 6 Pro.

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If Font Awesome is being looked at again soon, then maybe this one could be tackled as well?

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I’ll make sure we get an updated FA 6 in 6.3.0.

I probably should have added this to 6.2, but the Font Awesome URL can be controlled through the following filter in 6.3.0. If the path naming isn’t the same as other CDN’s we can change the pathing we use when I update to FA 6.

cs_fa_font_path

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As an update to this.

I’ve played around with Font Awesome 6 and have a branch with updates to FA 6. There’s a large number of new icons in Font Awesome. That’s great, but as a result the Font Awesome 6 webfonts which contain every single icon for a given type are getting to critical mass at 300kb+. In comparison, the average woff2 of FA 5 is less then 200kbs. Which is a lot too, given most sites are only using a handful of icons. This is the only way Cornerstone loads Font Awesome currently. Woff (not woff2) is removed in FA6. I don’t think that’s a big issue support is probably fine for woff2.

So I think my current plan is this. We move to sending out SVGs as the default and we move to using woff2 files as a theme option you have to turn on. We could drastically cut down site size, and even make using duo icons more feasible as those font files have always been huge. Since you could be including icons from raw-content, we might even just have woff2 files as the default if you are upgrading a site.

The introduction of “Sharp” icons also need some UI changes with our Icon picker. And the icon tab selector, will probably change to a select box. Not really an issue though, more just an update if you are looking to use “Sharp” icons.

Let me know what everybody thinks. If you think it’s just worth getting the current woff2 files updated to font awesome 6 and then moving on to SVG support later we can do that too.

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I’d love to see font awesome 6 in whatever functionality… even more so if it means a greater choice of icons. Love the idea of the SVG (if I’m reading it right that the site weight would only be the icons you end up using rather than the entire font pack?)

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Yes with SVGs you could mix and match weights and different types and it would only ever load the SVG / Icon you chose. We would include these SVGs too, much like the font packs. It also gains the advantage of being able to lazy load any icons not in view.

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Yes with SVGs you could mix and match weights and different types and it would only ever load the SVG / Icon you chose.

It also gains the advantage of being able to lazy load any icons not in view.

That sounds really good to be honest. Lighter page loads and lazy loading would definitely be worth it. Duotone icons are a nice bonus too.

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Following on from this idea of using SVGs, would it be an idea to update the icon element to handle SVGs, including from other sources. so it becomes more of an SVG element with possible controls for responsive sizing and interactive colour etc.

not sure how complex that would be, but that would be awesome

just thinking beyond that, a way of layering svg elements

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I love the idea of the SVG output. It is true that most sites use only just a tiny bit of available icons.

I am not sure if I would be happy with the file size increase for some new icons, before the SVG gets implemented, but I see others would love FA6 asap, so I can live with that. :slight_smile:

Also the duotone options like primary and secondary color and opacity directly in the Graphic options would be really great. Pulling a brand color dynamically for the primary icon color would open a whole new world of native templating.

I usually select one font-awesome weight for the website and turn the rest off in the Customizer. Unfortunately I cannot turn Brands off because of the social icons, or I do turn them off and use my own SVGs.

In the past, I noticed that Pro is relying on a few icons that would disappear if a certain font-weight is turned off. For that reason I had to leave it on, even though that was not my weight of choice. I’m not sure where that was. I think something like the legacy slider arrows and similar.

It would be amazing if Pro wouldn’t rely on a specific font-awesome weight, even for older websites, but let us choose the one we want instead. (I see that the Scroll Top anchor does this. That’s great!)

The topic of SVGs may be bringing us closer to my old proposed functionality to be able to insert inline SVGs as well inside the icon picker, like the GenerateBlocks icon picker does. That’d be awesome.

Anyway, every opportunity to reduce the footprint of the base install is most welcome. :+1:

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Yes, please. Having an updated version of FA would be amazing. You guys know the techincal details of all that a lot more than I do, so I trust it to happen well - even if a FA6 ends up being an optional thing to turn on and is implemented in a non-optimal way while the better way is worked on.

Whatever will make it possible to use all weights and styles of icons including duotone (fingers crossed) would be really really helpful.

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