Ive been trying to change all of my icons in my theme to font icons and I keep running into situations where the image files are nearly hard coded into IPS. A suggestion I have for IPS4 is the ability to use font icons for anything and everything.

Speaking of, Ive spent a couple hours trying to get the rating stars as a font icon and I can get it all working except for the blue stars. The javascript for this is over my head.

We are using font icons by default in 4.0.

We are using font icons by default in 4.0.

oh boy .. something else skinners have to put up with and resolve :sad:

May end up selling my license with all the new changes being made for 4.0

oh boy .. something else skinners have to put up with and resolve :sad:

“Put up with”? It’s a feature which is especially helpful for skinning (and for adapting a design for different viewport sizes, device resolutions and so on).

I am looking forward to it! :yes:

oh boy .. something else skinners have to put up with and resolve :sad:

May end up selling my license with all the new changes being made for 4.0

As a web designer, If you're not ready to adapt and learn new technologies, you're in the wrong profession. Don't be so afraid of change ;).

Font icons will make things incredibly easy for skinners. You will effectively be able to specify a single CSS class that can style every single icon throughout the board. Imagine doing that currently with all the .PNG files...

“Put up with”? It’s a feature which is especially helpful for skinning (and for adapting a design for different viewport sizes, device resolutions and so on).

I am looking forward to it! :yes:

Not to mention faster loading and less to cache :thumbsup:

Steve00, This was 'announced' in a blog post a while back, so far back I can't remember which one it was!

They're using FontAwesome though I believe ( http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons/ )

As a web designer, If you're not ready to adapt and learn new technologies, you're in the wrong profession. Don't be so afraid of change ;).

Font icons will make things incredibly easy for skinners. You will effectively be able to specify a single CSS class that can style every single icon throughout the board. Imagine doing that currently with all the .PNG files...

When you get to my age .. see if you think same then

Lot of these changes ... what am reading about appear to be going over my head ... but then who knows ... when am able to try v4 that may change .. its when reading about this and that change/feature that starts to get confusing

When you get to my age .. see if you think same then

Lot of these changes ... what am reading about appear to be going over my head ... but then who knows ... when am able to try v4 that may change .. its when reading about this and that change/feature that starts to get confusing

No one is forcing you to upgrade , technology is moving forward and IPB team is improving their software. I am very happy with this call , it will also lower httpd calls and used bandwidth. Many may feel bandwidth is cheap but when you have a busy board like ours , trust me bandwidth is not cheap :)

Don't worry, icon fonts are very easy to use. You'll probably have to do nothing, in fact. It's just like text on the page - you can use CSS to change their colors, or leave them and they inherit the styles of the text they're used with.

Steve00 - I'm not sure you understand what my statement (or the request) actually means. :)

Font icons is a method where-by you can show small pre-defined (pretty basic) "images", which are really just glyphs in a specific font-family. We are using Font Awesome, so if you check it out (http://fontawesome.io/icons/) you can see that to show an anchor icon you can do something like this (just an example)

<i class='fa fa-anchor'></i>

You do not have to use these in your custom skins. If you want to use custom icons you create or png images or something else, by all means go for it. Font icons are used by default, and they have many many benefits as others are pointing out, but as a skinner you still have complete freedom to change your custom skins however you feel is best for your intended audience. :)

When you get to my age .. see if you think same then

Lot of these changes ... what am reading about appear to be going over my head ... but then who knows ... when am able to try v4 that may change .. its when reading about this and that change/feature that starts to get confusing

I think you'll do fine :)

hell I KNOW you'll do better than me :)

Sound like a better way to go dropping the image/icon graphical bandwidth needs down to a single character font. I'm snooping around to see what fresh idea that might fall out for IPB4... :drool:

We are using Font Awesome, so if you check it out (http://fontawesome.io/icons/) you can see that to show an anchor icon you can do something like this (just an example)

This is the best 2013/2014 news!! THANK YOU! :heart:

Now, you have to write a blog entry about it :tongue:

It's already mentioned in a blog entry somewhere I thought. I could be wrong.

But won't people want graphics and not little font icons as some of them are animation and such.

But won't people want graphics and not little font icons as some of them are animation and such.

I doubt it's as many people as you think - but if they do, they can certainly change the theme to add it.

steve00: I understand font icons. Let that be your benchmark.

I doubt it's as many people as you think - but if they do, they can certainly change the theme to add it.

Issue is that more options are open while font icons only have so much.

ZakRhyno I don't think you are understanding.

Say we have an area we want to show a little ! icon at. In 4.0 we are using font-icons to do this (which are basically just CSS classes, but that's not important). It works fine.

Now say a custom theme wants to show an image there instead. They can absolutely still do this, just as with any previous version.

Our decision to use font icons does NOT mean you can't use images. Please don't be concerned about the ability to use images, because you can still do that. All this decision means is that out of the box the software is faster, lighter, more responsive, more easily able to adapt to different screen sizes (including retina displays)....the theme is overall "better". But you're certainly free to go back to using custom images if you want. :)