Custom emoticons/emoji list?

Continuing the discussion from [Paid] Need a Vanilla 2 Import tool:

Just by curiosity, is it potentially easilly doable to have a custom list of emoticons/emoji?

The users on our forum dislike the default emojis, in particular the ā€œlaughingā€ smiley so on my app.yml in the custom command section I have a line that backs up the default laughing.png and then it wgets the replacement smiley and writes it as laughing.png in the public/plugins/emoji/images folder. The custom smiley then shows up whenever that smiley is used so it should work if you donā€™t mind over-writing the existing smileys. Aside from that Iā€™m sure you could copy the emoji plugin and replace it with all your own smileys for a better solution.

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A configurable mapping from full :code:-style emojis to custom images should be about as hard as a configurable mapping from ASCII-style emotions to :codes:ā€¦ and it would make a lot of sense to implement both in the same UI.

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Many of my fellow staff have voiced negative opinions about the emoji smilies. eg. ā€œthey look evilā€.
I have looked into writing a plugin to allow the ā€œtraditionalā€ vB smilies - and the ā€œcustomā€ SitePoint smilies - but have been side-tracked by Real Life latey and havenā€™t gotten very far with it.

Collaboration in this regard is most welcome.

I get the same feedback from the users on our forum too. I would be very interested in this as well.

Evil? Do they object to a few specific smileys or the whole set?

I actually quite like most of these smileys, exceptā€¦

  • :smile: :smile: vs. , the emoji is too happy for a default smile.
  • :grin: :grin: vs. , here the emoji is really badly designed and looks more like fletched teeth.
  • :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: vs. , compared to what Iā€™m used to, the emoji is too neutral.
  • :frowning: :frowning: vs. , the emoji seems to espress more distress than sadness.

And obviously, a few oldies but goldies are just plain missingā€¦

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I pretty much 100% agree on those nitpicks, if a super designer wants to take a crack at improving them we would be more than happy to replace.

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[quote=ā€œelberet, post:6, topic:19479ā€]
Evil? Do they object to a few specific smileys or the whole set?
[/quote]I think I may have started the revolt on our instance, and my word was ā€œsinisterā€ - which is how I see all the yellow face smilies. Most of the others are fine, and Iā€™m particularly partial to the :bear: . For the others, at the moment, I just cheat.

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The current emojis look like theyā€™re lifted directly from Apple.

Edit: Ah yes, they are:

All other images
Copyright (c) 2013 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.
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Personally I think the Microsoft emojis look a little better. And the Google emojis have some really good facial expressions but I had some very negative feedback on our forum when I tried them out.

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I donā€™t think the Apple ones really fit in anywhere anymore - especially since iOS6 is long gone. My personal preference out of the three sets is the Microsoft ones, Iā€™m probably just more used to them though. I like some of the Google ones but a lot are justā€¦ odd.

My all time favourite emote pack is Rice Balls by David Lanham

I think the conclusion to draw is to enable custom smileys - perhaps a single plugin that admins can load different emote packs into, and add extras to? Part of it would be resolving which key combo renders which image. :smile:

Also, :slight_smile: is definitely happier than :smiley:

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Of course, the list could also use a :headdesk or :facepalm of some sort. Iā€™ve also got a couple of favorites from other contexts:

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can we change custom emoticon now?

+1
I would like to know this too. Isnā€™t there a directory with all the smileys as .pngs or a sprite we could replace with custom ones?

If you are on latest, yes. You can add custom ones in the admin area.

FYI, youā€™ve been able to do it via a plugin for a while now too.

Pretty sure you canā€™t since I havenā€™t pushed that feature yet :wink:

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I donā€™t think custom emoji are in yet, but as part of the ongoing work for the 1.2 release

  • select sets of emoji (Twitter, Google, Apple, EmojiOne) ā† this is done

  • add custom emoji (:garbage: or :trollface: or :whatever:) ā† this is not done yet

Oh, I thought I saw somewhere you posted a commit for it, but Iā€™m glad to be wrong :smile:

Oh youā€™re slick! Now I see you have committed it. :smile:

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