Icon Font Webpack Plugin

This plugin tries to keep the usage and maintenance of icon fonts as simple as possible:

a:before {
  font-icon: url('./account.svg');
}

Browser Support: IE9+
Preprocessor Support: All - works with sass, less, stylus, postcss, vanilla css, ...

Requirements

This plugin requires:

• webpack 3.x or higher
• postcss-loader 2.x or higher
• node 6 or higher

Installation

npm i --save-dev postcss-loader
npm i --save-dev iconfont-webpack-plugin

Configuration

All you have to do is to add the plugin to your postcss loader plugins inside your webpack.config.js:

const IconfontWebpackPlugin = require('iconfont-webpack-plugin');

  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        use: [
          'css-loader',
          {
            loader: 'postcss-loader',
            options: {
              plugins: (loader) => [
                // Add the plugin
                new IconfontWebpackPlugin(loader)
              ]
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  },

Advanced Configuration

Probably you won't need this but you can also pass some additional options.

Name	Type	Default	Description
resolve	{Function}		Required - A function which resolves the svg paths. See resolve
fontNamePrefix	{String}	''	Allows to prefix the generated font name
enforcedSvgHeight	{number}	1000	Scales all svg to the given height
modules	{Boolean}	false	Enable/Disable CSS Modules - should be equal to your css-loader settings

const IconfontWebpackPlugin = require('iconfont-webpack-plugin');

  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        use: [
          'css-loader',
          {
            loader: 'postcss-loader',
            options: {
              plugins: (loader) => [
                // Add the plugin
                new IconfontWebpackPlugin({
                  resolve: loader.resolve,
                  fontNamePrefix: 'custom-',
                  enforcedSvgHeight: 3000,
                  modules: false,
                })
              ]
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  },

Usage

After setting up the plugin your css has now a new feature:
font-icon declarations

a:before {
  font-icon: url('./account.svg');
  transition: 0.5s color;
}

a:hover:before {
  color: red;
}

and it will be compiled into:

@font-face {
  font-family: i96002e;
  src: url("data:application/x-font-woff;charset=utf-8;base64,d09GRgABAAAAA.....IdAA==") format('woff');
}

a:before {
  font-family: i96002e;
  content: '\E000';
  transition: 0.5s color;
}

a:hover:before {
  color: red;
}

Icon sizes

Shorthand for setting the icon size and the icon:

a:before {
  font-icon: 80% url('./account.svg');
}

Should you use icon fonts for everything?

No.

Icon fonts are really good for decorative icons (where the icon is purely ornamental and doesn’t incorporate core meaning or functionality).

For critical icons without fallbacks (like a hamburger menu icon) you should rather use SVGs. But also JPEGs, PNGs and even GIFs have their use cases.

Pick the best solution for your problem - there is no silver bullet. With this plugin it is pretty easy to use pixel images, svgs and font-icons side by side.

When should you use icon fonts over pure SVGs?

SVGs have some disadvantages and lack certain features especially when used inside pseudo elements:

• CSS-Transform issues in older Internet Explorer versions
• IE9 - IE 11 scaling issues
• Fill color doesn't work for background SVG images
• Inline SVGs are resolved relative to the page not to the css

What about all the rant on icon fonts?

Like all technologies there are disadvantages when using icon fonts.
We tried to apply best practices to solve the main issues for you.

• Screen Reader friendly: All generated icons use the Unicode Private Use Areas
• Prevents FOUT

License

This project is licensed under MIT.