FontAwesome becomes a monster

[pixycz]

I always loved FontAwesome, supported it, bought a Pro licence… Meanwhile you are growing and inflating and FontAwesome is less and less comprehensible and more and more overcomplicated. Now I'm completely lost in your system, I don't understand how to do the simplests tasks… If I'm using F.A.Pro, and I want just add three icons to my React project, it's such a pain in the ass…

Please, reconsider your plans and try to simplify the nuclear powerplant you're building, a bit… Keep in mind customers like me, who just need a couple of icons instantly, without installing a giant npm engine with a repository of millions icons. It would be nice to go to your web, pick a small set of icons I need and get only a small and simple piece of code, easy to implement.

In most cases it's just easier to forget I have the Pro licence and just use free icons avoiding the Pro ones. If I eventually setup F.A.Pro in my project and then share my GitHub repo with another developer, they can't see any icon and another pain in the ass comes to make them work…

Or, the design library i.e. – I loaded all the SVGs as assets to my Affinity Designer. It wasn't easy and straightforward process, but ok, it worked. But then a new version of FAPro was published and there is no way to update the assests. With every new version I have to import the assest again. I gave up couple of years ago, staying with an old version – I can't keep my icon assets up-to-date, as it's too complicated and time consuming…

OMG, it's even uneasy to simply copy the icon code from your web. Try it! Go i.e. to https://fontawesome.com/icons/hand-middle-finger?style=light and try and copy the icon ID string "fal fa-hand-middle-finger" (just the string, not the entire HTML). I'm doing this dozen times every day, another pain in the ass…

You just keep adding new features and super-hyper-geeky APIs and it seems you completely forgot the basis. Why people started to use FontAwesome. Remember? Because it used to be simple and easy. The easiest way to use a set of icons in my project. Alas, not anymore. Well, I have a 100MB, 12-thousand-items large @FortAwesome folder in my node-modules, but not able to use it, because I just don't get it, I don't know how to do such a simple task like load an icon SVG as image object… The stupid way (download individual SVGs from your web, store them in the src/img folder and load them from there)? It works fine. Your huge monster engine which took hours just to understand how to install? Nope.

Please try to be better instead of bigger. :(

[pixycz]

I had to check it, and it's the truth: a ~100MB @fortwaesome folder inside every single project. #zomg

[tiesont]

FWIW, you're not saying anything they aren't already thinking about - there's a couple of topics related to this in the Troubleshooting docs; for example: https://fontawesome.com/how-to-use/on-the-web/other-topics/troubleshooting#subset

Of course, the "there's too --bleeping-- much crap in this project" complaint is how I feel about most of npm, so it's not like Font Awesome is unique in that regard. That's not to dismiss or discount what you're saying...

[robmadole]

@pixycz you make a lot of really good points. And for the most part we pretty much agree. While we try to make it easy to use Font Awesome there is inherent complexity in the web and especially JavaScript projects.

Our approach has been to provide specific solutions for things that we feel warrant it. This results in different ways to use Font Awesome: webfonts, SVG + JavaScript, individual SVG files, SVG sprites, self-hosting, CDN's, etc. It also lead to creating specific projects for Vue, React, Angular, Ember, React Native, Wordpress, and more. We love that we have such diverse customers and we want people to use Font Awesome in whatever way works best for them.

Unfortunately, this comes with a certain amount of complexity. It's just unavoidable.

I will take a bit of time and address some of the things you mentioned specifically:

Keep in mind customers like me, who just need a couple of icons instantly, without installing a giant npm engine with a repository of millions icons.

We have our new Kits product and you can always download Font Awesome from https://fontawesome.com/download. If you don't like using NPM why did you choose that method of installing FA?

Or, the design library i.e. – I loaded all the SVGs as assets to my Affinity Designer

We've heard from a few Affinity Designer customers. We'd love to one day have better integration with this tool. However, I'm not sure it's fair to blame us for how their software operates. Do you have some ideas on how we could make this integration easier?

OMG, it's even uneasy to simply copy the icon code from your web.

Great point. I think we have lots of room for improvement here.

You just keep adding new features and super-hyper-geeky APIs and it seems you completely forgot the [basics].

You bet. We have a lot of customers who have requested those APIs and waited for them for a long time. But, the basic way of using Font Awesome still exists exactly like it did for version 4. You can download Font Awesome, unzip the package, and off you go.

The easiest way to use a set of icons in my project. Alas, not anymore.

Have you contacted our dedicated support team for help? We might be able to steer you in a direction that will be easier. If you want to tell me how your project is setup I might be able to make some recommendations. It sounds like you want to optimize for hassle-free. Using our Kits or CDN product might work best.

Please try to be better instead of bigger.

Great advice. We'll try and rise to the challenge.

[pixycz]

Thank you. I'm happy just knowing you care. I believe it will go the right way then. There is a hope. Thanks again.

I'm not sure if the support team can help, but I'll try.