As great as images are, we can’t use them anywhere when we design a website. They add file weight, require http request, and they don’t scale well. In general, they add to the websites load speed, which is bad.
That’s why if we want to add icons to our navigation menus, or anywhere on our web page, we use icon fonts. Icon fonts are fonts that doesn’t use the alphabet, instead it replaces the letters with icons. Also icon fonts doesn’t add any weight, nor they require https requites. They also scale well, don’t lose quality when scaled, easy to change color and more.
The Features of Icon Fonts
- Easy Color Change
- Include Shadows easily
- Have Good Browser Support
- Can use text based css
- Have smaller file sizes
- Can do anything images can
- Easily Scaleable
- Can be design on the fly, by making changes on :hover etc..
- And a ton more.
A list of Free Icon Fonts
Now that we know what icon fonts are, and why are they better to use then image icons, here are some icon fonts you should check out and maybe use in your future projects.
The Elegant Icon Font
Linecons Free – Free Line-Styled Icons
Icons V.3 by Hüseyin Yilmaz
Elusive Icons
Font Awesome Free Icon Font
Open Iconic – A Highly Legible Icon Font
Outlined Icons by Dario Ferrando
Minimal – A Minimally Designed Icon Font
Feather Icon Set – A Beautifully Simple Icon Font
Icon Shock Icon Font
Stackicons Social Icon Font
Goodies Icon Font
Socialicious – A Social Media Icon Library
Infinity Space Icon Font
Mono Social – An Icon Font Based on the Mono Social Icon Set
Map Icons – An Icon Font for Use with Google Maps
Weather Icon Font – A Weather Themed Icon Font
The Icony Icon Font
Ionicons – The Huge Icon Font for the Ionic Framework
Icon Pack – A Line-Styled Icon Font from Petras Nargela
Metrize Icons – A Metro-Style Icon Font
Iconia – An Icon Font With Three Styles: Regular, Circle and Cut
Dripicons – A Completely Free, Vector Line-Icon Font
Linea Iconset
Stroke 7 Icon Font
Icon-Works
Tonicons Outline Icons
Batch Icons
MFG Labs Web Icon Set
Premium Pixels Mini Icons
Social Media Icons
Social Media Glyph Set