mlwilkerson
commented
3 years ago Thanks for the feedback, @KZeni.
Icon search, selection, and usage has admittedly been one of the key gap areas of features since we inherited the plugin that previously lived at font-awesome in the WP plugins directory. The previous plugin did have a Tiny MCE picker. But it was out of date, would have needed some significant updating, and it wasn't clear to us that this usage paradigm was really what we wanted to commit to maintaining going forward.
That's in part because Gutenberg had recently become the default editor. So re-writing and maintaining a Tiny MCE picker in the classic editor seemed like probably not the most timely move in terms where WordPress editor usage seemed to be moving.
Another concern that I have about the usage paradigm is that, while "picking a static icon from among a set" fit the paradigm in Font Awesome 4 and prior, Font Awesome 5 began adding more to the range of usage. For example, Layering, Power Transforms, and a range of styles. Now Font Awesome 6 will be adding an additional layer of the taxonomy--families of styles. (Such as the new Sharp family.)
I've been trying to imagine how we'd provide a user experience that would bring users into an updated paradigm and make more available the range of features that have come along since Font Awesome 5, and even more in Font Awesome 6, rather than implementing for an old paradigm.
I also recognize that there are times to provide a more limited experience that may work for plenty of people plenty of the time. Perhaps this is one of those cases. But that's the level where I feel like this feature needs to be decided--the user experience level, in light of what Font Awesome is today and where it's headed, and what WordPress is today and where it's headed. The implementation of a Tiny MCE picker in the classic WordPress seems simple enough if it were the right solution.
Do you have any insight you could add about how your users use the various editors in WordPress? Do they use Gutenberg or only the classic editor? Do they use other premium plugins or themes with page builders where they are trying to use icons?
KZeni
I switched over from Better Font Awesome (https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-font-awesome/) and things are great (official, more up-to-date, more regular updates, etc.) However, I have people wanting a button added to the editor that allows for an icon picker to be used to insert an icon rather than needing to remember the shortcode, look up the specific icon name and/or prefix, etc. (which is something BFA has & I mention just as a reference.)
It seems like one could implement https://github.com/itsjavi/fontawesome-iconpicker (or equivalent) without too much trouble to make things much more usable for everyone (just want to pick & insert an icon right then & there... especially for those less savvy.) Also, it could be done in a way where it's specifically from the same library used by the plugin, and maybe even making sure the specific icons available on the site are what's offered by the picker (per it allowing the icons to be listed when initializing the picker for fontawesome-iconpicker, at least.)
For reference (and not saying it could be a direct copy of BFA), but it seems like the fontawesome-iconpicker library could be included on the site admin where TinyMCE might be present, https://github.com/MickeyKay/better-font-awesome-library/blob/master/better-font-awesome-library.php shows how the button could be added, https://github.com/MickeyKay/better-font-awesome-library/blob/master/js/admin.js shows how the button could trigger the picker & insert into the editor when chosen, and https://github.com/MickeyKay/better-font-awesome-library/blob/master/css/admin-styles.css shows how the picker may be styled to work a bit better in the admin. Again, this is just one way this feature could be implemented.
It'd be great to see this added, because sites that used to have this provided with Better Font Awesome have people asking for it back and those that never had it have people asking how they add icons within their content (or just quietly not using Font Awesome's icons [instead, using lesser graphics, not using enough visuals overall, etc.])
I'd hate to have people request that we switch to BFA just for the icon picker when everything else is effectively a downgrade from what's being provided here.
Btw, I've also posted this at https://wordpress.org/support/topic/feature-request-add-insert-icon-button-to-tinymce-editor-for-icon-picker/, but I wanted to mention it here for visibility of different audiences looking in different places that might want to discuss/support this all the same.