Introducing Font Awesome 5 and SVG icons

[jimmyfc23]

Just thought I’d post how I got these working with html after reading closely through the thread. (I would say in future to let everyone know in the original thread about the new system settings to get icons going on headers etc).

To add some icons go to /admin/site_settings/category/all_results?filter=icons and add the prefixes accordingly. “Add additional FontAwesome 5 icons that you would like to include in your assets. Use prefix ‘fa-’ for solid icons, ‘far-’ for regular icons and ‘fab-’ for brand icons.”

Eg fa-newspaper.

Then reference them in your html. Eg <svg class="fa d-icon d-icon-newspaper svg-icon svg-node" aria-hidden="true"><use xlink:href="#newspaper"></use></svg>.

[Mark_Schmucker (mark78)]

@tshenry

Hey @LKNickname, try this out:

const { iconNode } = require("discourse-common/lib/icon-library");
api.decorateWidget("header-icons:before", helper => {
  return helper.h("li", [
    helper.h(
      "a#globe-button.icon",
      {
        href: "https://www.website.com/",
        title: "Back to website"
      },
      iconNode("globe")
    )
  ]);
});

That worked so well I’d like to add a second button. I naively tried:

<script type="text/discourse-plugin" version="0.4">
const { iconNode } = require("discourse-common/lib/icon-library");
api.decorateWidget('header-icons:before', helper => {
    return helper.h('li',
      [
        helper.h('a#home-button.icon', {
            href:'https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets',
            title: 'Spreadsheet'
        }, iconNode('table')),
        helper.h('a#home-button.icon', {
            href:'https://google.com',
            title: 'Google'
        }, iconNode('globe')),
      ]
    );
});
</script>

But that gave a weird alignment:

How can I make the globe vertically aligned with the rest of the buttons?

[dax (Daniela)]

There is a well-maintained theme component to use that is already updated to works with FA5 and that add more than 1 button before the header icons:

Custom Header Links (icons)

Summary Custom Header Links (icons) will allow you to easily add linked icons to the Discourse header. Preview Preview on theme-creator.discourse.org Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-icon-header-links New to Discourse Themes? Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes Install this theme component Screenshots Desktop [Capture3] Mobile [Capture] This component includes a theme setting that …

[TerminalAddict (Paul W)]

Can I have some help?
I have previous registered a couple of extra icons:

api.decorateWidget('header-icons:before', helper => {
    return [
        helper.h('li', [
            helper.h('a#home-button.icon', {
                href: '/',
                title: 'McRides Home'
            }, helper.h('i.fa.fa-home.home-button-icon.d-icon')),
        ]),
                helper.h('li', [
            helper.h('a#weather-button.icon', {
                href: 'https://www.mcrides.co.nz/t/weather-forecast/77',
                title: 'Weather Forecast'
            }, helper.h('i.fa.fa-cloud.weather-button-icon.d-icon')),
        ])
    ];
});

I can see in this thread how I would redo this (or I’m not that skilled probably this )

[Steven]

The theme component introduced just before will help you do it really easily

Custom Header Links (icons)

Summary Custom Header Links (icons) will allow you to easily add linked icons to the Discourse header. Preview Preview on theme-creator.discourse.org Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-icon-header-links New to Discourse Themes? Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes Install this theme component Screenshots Desktop [Capture3] Mobile [Capture] This component includes a theme setting that …

But if you really want to do it manually, the first post of this howto will help

(Superseded) Add new link on header beside search icon

This feature is now available as a dedicated theme component. Want to add a new link right next to search icon on header? Follow below steps: Add this JavaScript code to your site theme Go to Admin Customize Themes Select the theme you wish to customize Edit CSS/HTML </head> <script type="text/discourse-plugin" version="0.4"> const { iconNode } = require("discourse-common/lib/icon-library"); api.decorateWidget('header-icons:before', helper => { return helper.h('li', [ he…

[TerminalAddict (Paul W)]

how do i
add the icon to the svg icon subset site setting

Here’s what I’ve got:

api.decorateWidget('header-icons:before', helper => {
    return [
        helper.h('li', [
            helper.h('a#home-button.icon', {
                href: '/',
                title: 'McRides Home'
            }, iconNode('home')),
        ]),
        helper.h('li', [
            helper.h('a#weather-button.icon', {
                href: 'https://www.mcrides.co.nz/t/weather-forecast/77',
                title: 'Weather Forecast'
            }, iconNode('cloud-sun')),
        ])
    ];
});

the home icon works, the cloud-sun (I also tried cloud) doesn’t

[Steven]

Search for the setting svg icon and type the name of the icon with the right prefix

fa-cloud or fa-cloud-sun and it should work after a refresh of the page

[meetdilip]

Does this mean that Discourse still ships with Font Awesome even though it uses SVG icons ?

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Font Awesome is itself SVG in V5

[meetdilip]

So v 2.2 does come with FA pre loaded ? I thought you skipped it for its size.

[vinothkannans (Vinoth Kannan)]

@neil

Update Font Awesome to v5.4.1 and SVGs (#6557)

You should check our release topic to know more about included features in version 2.2. Also the blog post.

[meetdilip]

I read it. It says about dropping the font icon.

We’ve also fully converted to SVG icons instead of relying on a font icon. This is more efficient than shipping a giant and mostly unused icon font. Plus, it’s now much easier to switch any visible icon in Discourse with something else, even a completely custom one-off glyph that you created.

Prefer to use your custom logo instead of the default like heart? Make it so!

[vinothkannans (Vinoth Kannan)]

Yes, we moved to SVG icons instead of fonts. But that doesn’t mean we skipped Font Awesome .

@codinghorror

Font Awesome is itself SVG in V5

[meetdilip]

I see. So you are using FA as SVG images ? I never knew we can extract them individually.

[TerminalAddict (Paul W)]

Thanks !
I didn’t even know it was there

[Chi_Duc (NDC)]

Anybody can help?
I need to replace this code to svg:
<i class="fa fa-long-arrow-left" aria-hidden="true"></i>
Thank you so much!

[tshenry (Taylor)]

That specific icon has been removed from the list of free font awesome icons. The closest equivalent is long-arrow-alt-left. If you are limited to using HTML, you would use:

<svg class="fa d-icon d-icon-long-arrow-alt-left svg-icon svg-node" aria-hidden="true">
  <use xlink:href="#long-arrow-alt-left"></use>
</svg>

You will also need to add long-arrow-alt-left to the svg icon subset site setting.

[Chi_Duc (NDC)]

Thanks @tshenry
You are so awesome
I tried to use long-arrow-alt-left, it worked well.
But can you tell me more if I still want to use long-arrow-left.

[tshenry (Taylor)]

@Chi_Duc

But can you tell me more if I still want to use long-arrow-left .

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, that icon is not available in the free tier of Font Awesome icons. If long-arrow-alt-left will not work for you, I think your best option might be to create your own version and use a plugin as described in the post above.

[Chi_Duc (NDC)]

oh, I see
Thanks @tshenry so much!