MD Refresh - Icons

[cgalvarino]

#3875

@shindelr

[shindelr]

@abkfenris @youngmorse @cgalvarino

Looks like the fontawesome icon library currently being used. Should I stick with that? Or migrate to material UI as the wireframe in #3875 suggests?

[abkfenris]

Ya, we're currently using FontAwesome. I personally find the overall Material design to feel pretty cheap and lacking in UX hierarchy, but I've got less opinions on the icon set, other than we should just use one icon set.

[cgalvarino]

What FA license does this project have?

[abkfenris]

We're using the free set.

[shindelr]

Sounds like continuing with fontawesome is right course then?

[tshyka]

Are there any benefits of using a paid version of Fontawesome or switching to Material UI? Depending on the cost, NERACOOS would cover it.

[shindelr]

I was able to find all the free Fontawesome equivalents of the icons listed from Material in the wireframe. Visually, the free versions have a soft rounded look to them as opposed to the listed MU icons which are all sharp. There are paid FA versions that are nearly identical to MU.

@abkfenris might know better here, but I believe the two packages are pretty similar in terms of size if you're only working with Icons and not everything else. So no technical gains either way?

MU is free open-source, FA has more free icons but of irrelevant type for the context here.

[cgalvarino]

I ended up ponying up for the pro version for sites I was developing. When they show you the free options next to the pro options, no contest. Of course, that's their plan all along. I bought it for 1y. $120 or so. You can use it forever, but you don't get updates once your time is up.

https://fontawesome.com/v6/search

Go there and search for a couple of things. There is an ALL | PRO | FREE toggle above the icon set. Jeez. They used to show you in the set itself whether something was free or not. Now they want to bait the hook first.

[abkfenris]

I haven't played with tree shaking Material Icons, but I think I've got it set up that only the FA icons we use are getting bundled right now.