If you have had a chance to look at the demo of our November Joomla template - Ecospirit - you may have noticed that we have used some very handy font icons in the menu and in the content of the site. We have done this using our JB Type plugin which now comes with the complete set of Font Awesome Icon fonts.

Fast and flexible fonts icons

While Icon fonts have been around for a while they are fast becoming (one of) the next big things in web design. Icon fonts are great because they are a single font asset (no images needed) and are able to be scaled using traditional css techniques - this makes them fast and flexible. The icons behave like any other font and so you can specify their color, size background etc using some simple css.

Font icons also scale to suit the pixel ratio of your browser - so no need to specify a new image for retina or higher pixel ratio devices.

JB Type is now more awesome

Adding Font Awesome icon fonts is now pretty simple when you use the JB Type plugin. We have updated JB Type documentation and the applicable syntax for you to use as reference.

In order to add an icon font simply type.

{jb_icon-star}This is my text{/jb_icon-star}

You can see a full run down of the fonts available on the JB Type documentation page.

JB Type has a bright future but ...

JB Type was originally put together as a plugin to help create "fancy" content styling in your Joomla content without the hassle of adding html directly into the editor. While this is still it's focus, there are certain challenges that come with maintaining old solutions and also adopting new ones, while at the same time keeping the plugin's footprint light and usability high.

Alot of the usability comes down to documentation which we will be updating in the next few days. We will also be taking a look at how best to take this plugin forward. At this stage version 2 may see the dropping of all icon assets in favour of font icons. We still need to investigate this throughly though.

What do you want to see in JB Type?

One thing I want to add to the plugin is the ability for users to specify their own custom styles in the plugin admin.

Another is the implementation of Wordpress style shortcodes for things like tooltips, sliders, tabs etc.

We are of course keen to hear from you what kind of things you would like added to the plugin so feel free to let us know in the comments below.

blog comments powered by Disqus