Using .glyphicon .glyphicon- is cruel and unusual punishment

[tyler-johnson]

I'm sure some where along the line there was a discussion about how icon classes should be declared, but how the current format was decided on is beyond me.

• it takes forever to type by hand
• impossible to switch to other icons-as-a-font libraries and keep the same code as most of them use Bootstrap 2.x .icon-
• approx 17 extra bytes I don't want or need
• just plain old silly

I believe it would be in the best interest of the Bootstrap community to start a serious discussion on standardizing the icon class names. More for than just for Bootstrap, too. Font-Awesome and the other icons-as-a-font libraries would benefit from standardization as well.

To me, it seems natural to stick to Bootstrap 2.x, (just .icon-), however extending with an extra .icon before it would also be better than the existing implementation.

[mdo]

Not gonna happen until at least v4, and that's not coming anytime soon.

it takes forever to type by hand

Not really a huge deal, nor a valid criticism in my opinion worth investing in further. Typing is pretty easy :). To make it even easier, check out if your editor has zen coding abilities—makes for super fast markup writing.

impossible to switch to other font libraries as most of them use Bootstrap 2.x .icon-

Find and replace works wonders. Also, you can customize the download to remove them or recompile your own version locally if you like.

approx 17 extra bytes I don't want or need

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't an issue either. Your pages should be gzipped and as such those repeated strings basically get counted once.

Overall, it comes down to performance. The attribute selectors we used in 2.x just don't cut it in larger projects and classes are way more performant. It also fits with our base and modifier class approach elsewhere in the project.

[tlindig]

I totally agree with @appleifreak.

The way you now chosen has the described harm without benefit. You taken a product name as class name, where you better use a semantic name. I can not see a technical reason for that.

To solve the performance problem and the base + modifier class approach, the only needed change was:

add a class "icon".

The usage than would be:

<i class="icon icon-search"></i>

Please rollback the bondage to use "glyphicon".

[fdaugan]

• it takes forever to type by hand
  • I've not seen "zen coding abilities" editor in requirements of BS3
  • Seriously increase risk of mispelling
  • "jQuery" is more usable with "$", I don't know a lot of people ready to switch to the jQuery object name.
• approx 17 extra bytes I don't want or need
  • Gzip or not, replace("glyph","") save 1.1Ko of text to be parsed in "bootstrap.min.css"
  • Find and replace works wonder, so why not doing it in a vanilla BS?

I add this question : why exposing icon provider in BS3 in the end-developper code? I guess for adding a BS4 upgrade guide row.

[JoyceBabu]

Can the prefix be made configurable using a variable? Font Awesome already does this.

[Oxicode]

👎