A new way of creating symbols, glyphs and icons on the web is emerging. The beautifully vectorised images you’re starting to see embedded in sites are called symbol fonts, and they’re smaller, faster, more manageable and smoother than any CSS sprite you might create. Symbol fonts will change the way front-end developers think and code sites. Are you ready?
In this book, Brian Suda will walk you through five quick chapters about symbol fonts. He'll explain everything you need to know, from why they're important, to convincing your boss on why you need to make the switch. You'll learn how to properly and semantically add them into your HTML, as well as follow a step-by-step tutorial on how to convert your vector symbols into a font-face ready to embed into your site. No matter what your level of experience, you should be up and rasterising in less than an afternoon.
We all know what a font is. Some of us might even have a favourite or deplore a certain comical, whimsical font, but you might not know what a symbol font is.
Just because a technology is new doesn’t automatically make it better. But embedding a font into your webpages has settled down and offers some very interesting possibilities.
It is easy to get custom fonts to render in a webpage, but there is a proper and semantic way to code a symbol font into your HTML.
Symbol fonts are so new that fresh resources appear daily. We’ll conclude by pointing towards things you need to know and read to catch up.
“Creating a symbol font doesn't take much more know-how than creating vector graphics”
Brian Suda