FontAwesome, one of the largest and most popular icon libraries teased some fun new features in their upcoming updates. Last month with their FontAwesome 5.9 version they introduced 421 new icons, and now even more are on the way.
The first of new features to be shown in 5.9 were the introduction of “duo icons”. These are icons that are often paired together for various uses. For example, a few new pairings include a laptop & phone for smaller devices, a silo & barn, and two different size shopping bags.
Next, they announced that duotone icons would be added in the near future. According to them, you will be able to control the individual colors yourself! Since this feature hasn’t been officially released as of this post, there’s no proper documentation on this yet. We can only assume that the colors can be changed via CSS pseudoclasses like ::before and ::after.
According to this tweet from last Friday, the duotone icons are almost ready for release. If you have a FontAwesome account you can opt in to the beta now and try them out yourself!
Psst! Our duotone icons are almost ready for primetime. Want to kick the tires a bit early? Enable beta features in your https://t.co/GoRMGL6qhK account (https://t.co/Voq1UdnOAS) today! pic.twitter.com/1zFgeuotc4
— Font Awesome (@fontawesome) July 3, 2019
FontAwesome is used by millions of websites and nearly a third of the top million websites utilize this powerful library of icons. While some argue that using the library may lead to a increase in page load time, we haven’t noticed a significant increase or decrease in page speed when using or not using the library. It’s our opinion that the benefits greatly outweigh the costs, and many other websites agree.
We look forward to making use of them ourselves in our upcoming projects once they are officially released.