Unicon!

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A mystical CSS icon solution.

Unicon is a Grunt.js task that makes it easy to manage icons and background images for all devices, preferring HD (retina) SVG icons but also provides fallback support for standard definition browsers, and old browsers alike. From a CSS perspective, it's easy to use, as it generates a class referencing each icon, and doesn't use CSS sprites.

Unicon takes a folder of SVG files (typically, icons that you've drawn in an application like Adobe Illustrator), and outputs them to CSS in 3 formats: svg data urls, png data urls, and a third fallback CSS file with references to regular png images, which are also automatically generated and placed in a folder.

Unicon also generates a small bit of JavaScript and CSS to drop into your site, which asynchronously loads the appropriate icon CSS depending on a browser's capabilities, and a preview HTML file with that loader script in place.

You can see a demonstration of the output here.

License

Copyright (c) 2012 Scott Jehl, Filament Group, Inc. Licensed under the MIT license.

Getting Started

First, you'll need to install PhantomJS, which you might already have if you have Grunt installed (No? You'll need that too.).

Once those are installed...

Install the Unicon module with: npm install grunt-unicon

Then add this line to your project's grunt.js gruntfile:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-unicon');

And lastly, add the configuration settings to your grunt.js file as mentioned below. Unicon will batch your icons whenever you run $ grunt, and output the files listed above to your dest folder, which is documented below.

Documentation

Required configuration properties

Unicon has 2 required configuration properties: src and dest. Both need to be defined for Unicon to run.

• src: path to your folder of svg files, relative to the grunt.js file. Perhaps something like images/icons-source/.
• dest: path to the folder that Unicon will write to, relative to the grunt.js file. Ideally, this would be a folder that does not yet exist in your directory. Perhaps something like css/icons-dist/.

These can be set in your grunt.js config file, under the name unicon, like so:

	unicon: {
      src: "css/dist/icons/",
      dest: "css/icons/"
    }

The src property refers to the directory in which your SVG icons are stored. The dest property refers to the directory you'd like Unicon to create, which will contain your output files.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Unicon will overwrite any files in the dest directory if they are of the same name as a file that Unicon needs to create. For easiest results, you can set dest to a folder that does not yet exist in your directory and Unicon will create that folder, or set it to an existing folder and be sure to configure Unicon to create file names that do not already exist in that folder.

With these configuration properties set, you can add unicon to your default tasks list. That'll look something like this:

grunt.registerTask('default', 'lint qunit concat min unicon');

Unicon will now batch your icons whenever you run grunt.

Optional configuration properties

In addition to the required configuration properties above, Unicon's grunt configuration lets you configure the names of the files and the images folder it generates inside dest.

• datasvgcss: The name of the generated CSS file containing SVG data uris. Default: "icons.data.svg.css"
• datapngcss: The name of the generated CSS file containing PNG data uris. Default: "icons.data.png.css"
• urlpngcss: The name of the generated CSS file containing external png url references. Default: "icons.fallback.css"
• previewhtml: The name of the generated HTML file containing PNG data uris. Default: "preview.html"
• loadersnippet: The name of the generated text file containing the Unicon loading snippet. Default: "unicon.loader.txt"
• pngfolder: The name of the generated folder containing the generated PNG images. Default: "png/"
• cssprefix: a string to prefix all css classes with. Default: "icon-"

Browser testing results for icon output

The generated asynchronous CSS loader script delivers an appropriate icon stylesheet depending on a device/browser's capabilities.

Browsers that render the SVG data url stylesheet:

• IE9
• Chrome 14+ (maybe older too?)
• Safari 4+ (maybe older too?)
• Firefox 3.6+ (maybe older too?)
• Opera 10+ (maybe older too?)
• iOS 3+ Safari and Chrome
• Android 4.0 Chrome (caveat: SVG icons do not scale in vector, but do appear to draw in high-resolution)
• Android 4.0 ICS Browser
• BlackBerry Playbook

Browsers that receive the PNG data url stylesheet:

• IE8
• Android 2.3 Browser
• Android 2.2 Browser
• Android 2.1 Browser
• Android 1.6 Browser
• Android 1.5 Browser

Browsers that receive the fallback png request:

• IE7
• IE6
• Non-JavaScript environments

Tips

Serving compressed CSS

One of the great benefits to data uris is the ability to compress the images heavily via gzip. Be sure to do this, as it'll cut your icon transfer size greatly.

Creating SVG Artwork

The workflow we've been using so far involves creating a new Illustrator file with the artboard set to the desired size of the icon you want set in the CSS.

Export the artwork by choosing File > Save as... In the dialog, choose "SVG" as the format and enter a name for the file (this wil be used as your class name later, so keep it free of any disallowed CSS class characters like ., {, (, ), etc.

In the Save SVG dialog that opens up, there are lots of options. SVG has a ton of formats, so here are a few tips we've learned.

• SVG Profile: Seems like SVG 1.1 Tiny is really well supported across even older mobile platforms so if you have simple artwork that doesn't use gradients or opacity this will yield a smaller and more compatible graphic. If you want to use all the fancy effects, save artwork as SVG 1.1.
• Type: Convert to outline before export.
• Subsetting: None, I usually convert all text to outlines ahead of time
• Images: Embed
• Don't check "Preserve Illustrator editing" to reduce file size

Copyright and licensing for the example SVG icons...

The example SVG icons in the source folder are borrowed from a few places, with attribution noted below.

• Unicorn icon by Andrew McKinley, The Noun Project
• Bear icon by National Park Service
• Cat icon by Marie Coons
• All others are either from this free set by Tehk Seven or drawn by @toddparker of Filament Group