Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Icon fonts
Raised as a usability problem by 10 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2012–2025), in 8 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Icons break into unreadable symbols when icon font isn't installedUnreviewed
20122026- Icon font ligatures show words instead of icons, achieving the opposite of their intent2025-10-03
- Online tools for icon fonts are clunky and hard to explain to new developers2021-02-24
- Adding new symbols to the icon file is a giant hassle for developers2021-02-24
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 10 complaints
- Icon font ligatures show words instead of icons, achieving the opposite of their intent2025-10-03
- Icons that fail to render defeat their purpose despite having a description2021-03-03
- Online tools for icon fonts are clunky and hard to explain to new developers2021-02-24
- Adding new symbols to the icon file is a giant hassle for developers2021-02-24
- When fonts are blocked, icons show as random characters and users can't tell what they mean2016-08-24
- Navigation icons break and show unusable when the font fails to load2015-10-04
- When icon fonts fail to load, controls show as unreadable boxes and users can't tell what they do2014-11-10
- Icons are meaningless characters with no text label, inaccessible to users2014-01-07
- Icons break into unreadable symbols when the site's icon font isn't installed2014-01-07
- Can't match icons to their actions; (?) and (i) confusing until first use2012-11-12