Replace direct use of Font Awesome icon classes

[brianteeman]

Summary of Changes

Replace direct use of Font Awesome (fa-) icon classes with Joomla's generic icon- classes where the generic equivalents are missing, and add the necessary mappings to media_source/system/scss/_icomoon.scss.

Why is this change needed?

Joomla's intended approach was to use generic icon- classes throughout the CMS, with the corresponding Font Awesome icons mapped centrally in _icomoon.scss. Unfortunately over time we have forgotten this.

This approach serves two purposes: maintaining backwards compatibility with the IcoMoon icon classes used in Joomla 3,(not really relevant today) and decoupling Joomla's markup from the underlying icon library so that Font Awesome could be replaced with an alternative in the future (very relevant today and tomorrow).

Some direct uses of Font Awesome classes were inadvertently introduced or overlooked, bypassing this abstraction. This proposal is to correct those instances and restores consistency with the intended approach.

Work required

1. Replace all fa- icons with a generic icon-
2. Verify that the generic icon- classes are correctly mapped to their corresponding Font Awesome icons in _icomoon.scss.
3. Confirm that the changes do not introduce regressions in existing icon display or styling.

Approval Information

Approved: 11.11.2026
Minimum Target Version: 7.0
Annotation: Accepted

[rdeutz]

We should make this consistent. Maybe discuss this with Angie and Dimitries what they have planned for the design system.

[brianteeman]

@angieradtke @dgrammatiko

[dgrammatiko]

Some time ago I tried to provide a way forward, ie support both svg and icon fonts, there was a decision to of with WAM instead of the HTMLHelper and actually I was revisiting that PR (#44771) the last few days, so expect something for 7.0

[dgrammatiko]

But the question was about moving to the icon- classes and my personal take is: let's do it!

[brianteeman]

My thoughts are that going back to only using icon- as originally intended makes anything moving forward easier

[angieradtke]

my thoughts https://www.der-auftritt.de/en/insights/blog-englisch/icons-in-webprojects-and-interfaces.html

an idea, only an idea https://github.com/angieradtke/J-Icons

[richard67]

an idea, only an idea https://github.com/angieradtke/J-Icons

That link doesn't work for me.

[angieradtke]

sorry , it was private. Please try again

[richard67]

Works. What is a "Webcompomeent"? :-)

[angieradtke]

I guess my secretary had the day off. :-) Where did you find that? Then I won't have to look for it.

[richard67]

In this section: https://github.com/angieradtke/J-Icons#what-is-j-icon

Joomla System Plugin for SVG icon management. Provides free FontAwesome icons (solid, regular, brands). Renders icons as inline SVG sprites or Webcompomeent.

[brianteeman]

For reference the original PR #30707

[angieradtke]

[brianteeman]

what does any of that have to do with #48662 (comment)

Some direct uses of Font Awesome classes were inadvertently introduced or overlooked, bypassing this abstraction. This proposal is to correct those instances and restores consistency with the intended approach.

[drmenzelit]

The Joomla Maintainer Team decided at the 11.11.2026 meeting to accept this feature.

[brianteeman]

for 6.3?

[drmenzelit]

7.0

[brianteeman]

shucks i just did it on 6.3 - i will rebase it

[brianteeman]

PR done #48840 #48841