[css] Font Awesome not working, icons showing as squares

So I'm trying to prototype a marketing page and I'm using Bootstrap and the new Font Awesome file. The problem is that when I try to use an icon, all that gets rendered on the page is a big square.

Here's how I include the files in the head:

<head>
        <title>Page Title</title>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/bootstrap.css">
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/bootstrap-responsive.css">
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/font-awesome.css">
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/app.css">
        <!--[if IE 7]>
            <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/font-awesome-ie7.min.css">
        <![endif]-->
</head>

And here's an example of me trying to use an icon:

<i class="icon-camera-retro"></i>

But all that gets rendered in a big square. Does anyone know what could be going on?

This question is related to css html twitter-bootstrap font-awesome

The answer is


The /css/all.css file contains the core styling plus all of the icon styles that you’ll need when using Font Awesome. The /webfonts folder contains all of the typeface files that the above CSS references and depends on.

Copy the entire /webfonts folder and the /css/all.css into your project’s static assets directory (or where ever you prefer to keep front end assets or vendor stuff).

Add a reference to the copied /css/all.css file into the of each template or page that you want to use Font Awesome on.

Just Visit - https://fontawesome.com/how-to-use/on-the-web/setup/hosting-font-awesome-yourself You will get the answer.


if your using sass and have imported in your main.scss @import '../vendor/font-awesome/scss/font-awesome.scss';

The error may come from the font-awesome.scss file that is looking for the font files in it's relative path.

So remember to override the $fa-font-path variable: $fa-font-path: "https://netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.3.0/fonts" !default;

like this there is no need to add the cdn in your index.html


If your server is IIS, be sure to add the correct MIME to serve .woff file extension. The correct MIME is application/octet-stream


This may help, check to ensure that you haven't inadvertently changed the font family on the icon. If you have changed the .fa item's font family from: FontAwesome the icon will not show. It's always something silly and small.

Hope that helps someone.


Using absolute instead of relative paths solved it for me. I was using relative paths (see first example below) and that didn't work. I checked via console and found the server was returning a 404, files not found.

Relative path caused a 404:

@font-face { 
font-family: "FontAwesome";
src: url("../fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot?v=4.0.3");
}

Absolute path solved it cross browser:

@font-face { 
font-family: "FontAwesome";
src: url("http://www.mysite.com/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot?v=4.0.3");
}

I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you have to, but it works for me. Ofcourse, you should repeat this for all the font formats in the font-awesome.css file.


I had this issue and went through each step carefully...even though I've been using FA for ages...and then I realized I had this line in my mail css file:

* {
font-family: Arial !important;
}

Silly mistake, but this could tip off someone in future!


Double check the fontawesome-all.css file - at the very bottom there will be a path to the webfonts folder. Mine had "../webfonts" format in it, which meant that the css file would be looking 1 level up from where it is. As all of my css files were in css folder and I added the fonts to the same folder, this was not working.

Just move your fonts folder up a level and all should be well :)

Tested with Font Awesome 5.0


You must have 2 classes, the fas class and the fa-* class. See Basic Use in the docs:

The fa prefix has been deprecated in version 5. The new default is the fas solid style and the fab style for brands.

// Correct (version >= 5)
<i class="fas fa-search"></i>    

// Wrong (version < 5)
<i class="fa fa-search"></i>

You must return the header Access-Control-Allow-Origin to * for your fonts files


This should be much simpler in the new version 3.0. Easiest is to point to the Bootstrap CDN: http://www.bootstrapcdn.com/?v=01042013155511#tab_fontawesome


As of Dec 2018, I find it easier to use the stable version 4.7.0 hosted on bootstrapcdn instead of the font-awesome 5.x.x cdn on their website -- since every time they upgrade minor versions the previous version WILL break.

<link media="all" rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">

Icons are the same:

<i class="fa fa-facebook"></i>

It could be possible that your font path is not correct so that css not able to load the font and render the icons so you need to provide the stranded path of attached fonts.

@font-face { 
font-family: "FontAwesome";
src: url("fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot");
}

You must have 2 classes, the fa class and the class that identifies the desired icon fa-twitter, fa-search, etc …

<!-- Wrong -->
<i class="fa-search"></i>    

<!-- Correct -->
<i class="fa fa-search"></i>

I found a solution today which was to:

  1. Download the entire project from their Github page
  2. Then follow the rest of the steps on their page under the Default CSS section about moving the directory into your project and adding the link in the HEAD section of an .html file

The problem with their documentation is that they do not specify a link to where you should get a copy of the entire font-awesome project to put into your project.


i am using Font Awesome 4.3.0 just linking from maxcdn works as mentioned here,

but to host in your server putting fonts and css in same folder worked for me, like this

enter image description here

then just link the css:

<link href="~/fonts/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />

hope helps someone.


My problem was with adding the

<link rel="stylesheet" href="bower_components/font-awesome/css/font-awesome.min.css">

inside a

<!-- build:css assets/styles/main.css -->
<!-- endbuild -->

tag

I fixed it by placing it outside the tag.


Open your font-awesome.css theres code like :

@font-face {
  font-family: 'FontAwesome';
  src: url('../fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot?v=4.5.0');
  src: url('../fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot?#iefix&v=4.5.0') format('embedded-opentype'), url('../fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff2?v=4.5.0') format('woff2'), url('../fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff?v=4.5.0') format('woff'), url('../fonts/fontawesome-webfont.ttf?v=4.5.0') format('truetype'), url('../fonts/fontawesome-webfont.svg?v=4.5.0#fontawesomeregular') format('svg');
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

you must have folder like :

font awesome -> css
             -> fonts

or the easiest way :

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.4.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">

In case you are working with Maven and Apache Wicket also check for the following in order to try to resolve the issue with Font-Awesome and icons not being loaded:

If you have placed your files for example in the following file structure

/src
 /main
  /java
   /your
    /package
     /css
      font-awesome.css
     /font
      fontawesome-webfont.eot
      fontawesome-webfont.svg
      fontawesome-webfont.svgz
      fontawesome-webfont.ttf
      fontawesome-webfont.woff

Check 1) Are you correctly using a Package Resource Guard in order to allow to load the font files correctly?

Example from your class which extends WebApplication:

@Override
public void init() {
    super.init();   
    get().getResourceSettings().setPackageResourceGuard(new PackageResourceGuard());

}

Check 2) After you have made sure that all fonts are correctly transferred to the Web Browser, check for what has been actually transferred to the Web Browser, i.e., did the integrity of the font files change? Compare the files in your source directory and the files transferred to the Web Browser using, e.g., the Web Developer Toolbar of Firefox and DiffDog (for file comparison).

In particular if you are using Maven be aware of resource filtering. Do not filter the folder where your /font files are contained - otherwise they will be corrupted.

Example from your pom.xml

<build>
    <finalName>Your project</finalName>
    <resources>
        <resource>
            <filtering>true</filtering>
            <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
        </resource>
        <resource>
            <filtering>false</filtering>
            <directory>src/main/java</directory>
            <includes>
                <include>**</include>
            </includes>
            <excludes>
                <exclude>**/*.java</exclude>
            </excludes>
        </resource>
    </resources>
</build>

In the example above we do not filter the folder src/main/java, where the css and font files are contained.

For further information on the filtering of binary data please also see the documentation:

http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-resources-plugin/examples/filter.html

In particular the documentation warns: "Warning: Do not filter files with binary content like images! This will most likely result in corrupt output. If you have both text files and binary files as resources, you need to declare two mutually exclusive resource sets. The first resource set defines the files to be filtered and the other resource set defines the files to copy unaltered..."


What fixed the issue for me (on my Windows 7 machine) was decrypting my project directory. It's crazy how many visual and functional glitches originally arise from that when testing your website. Just get to a command prompt and run:

attrib -R %PROJECT_PATH%\*.* /S
cipher /a /d /s:%PROJECT_PATH%

...where %PROJECT_PATH% is the full pathname to the directory where your code is stored.


Now in fontawesome 5 you can deliver a cached version of JS over Https.

<script defer src="https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.0.9/js/all.js" integrity="sha384-8iPTk2s/jMVj81dnzb/iFR2sdA7u06vHJyyLlAd4snFpCl/SnyUjRrbdJsw1pGIl" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

More info on https://fontawesome.com/get-started/svg-with-js


I was having the same issue with font awesome 5 downloaded with yarn, I made added the min.css file ALONG with the all.js file.

Hope this helps someone someone

<link  rel="stylesheet"   href="node_modules/@fortawesome/fontawesome-free/css/fontawesome.min.css">
<script src="node_modules/@fortawesome/fontawesome-free/js/all.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

It wasn't working for me because I had Allow from none directive for the root directory in my apache config. Here's how I got it to work...

My directory structure:

root/
root/font-awesome/4.4.0/css/font-awesome.min.css
root/font-awesome/4.4.0/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.*
root/dir1/index.html

where my index.html has:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="../font-awesome/4.4.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">

I chose to continue to disallow access to my root and instead added another directory entry in my apache config for root/font-awesome/

<Directory "/path/root/font-awesome/">
    Allow from all
</Directory>

font-weight: 900;

I had a different issue with Font Awesome 5. Default font-weight should be 900 for FontAwesome icons but I overwrote it to 400 for span and i tags. It just worked, when I corrected it.

Here is the issue reference in their Github page, https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/11946

I hope it will help someone.


Use with the upper class

<div class="container">
  <i class="fa fa-facebook"></i>
</div>

Starting in version 5, if you downloaded the package from this site:

https://fontawesome.com/download

The fonts are in the all.css and all.min.css file.

This is what your reference would look like using the latest version now (replace with your folder):

<link href="/MyProject/Content/fontawesome-free-5.10.1-web/css/all.min.css" rel="stylesheet">

I have changed from 3.2.1 to 4.0.1 and the folder was font and now is called fonts.

src: url('../font/fontawesome-webfont.eot?v=3.2.1');

src: url('../fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot?v=4.0.1');

I hope it help someone.


If you are using LESS or SASS, open the font-awesome.less/sass file and edit the path variable @fa-font-path: "../font"; which points to the actual fonts:

@fa-font-path: "../font";

@font-face {
  font-family: 'FontAwesome';
  src: url('@{fa-font-path}/fontawesome-webfont.eot?v=3.0.1');
  src: url('@{fa-font-path}/fontawesome-webfont.eot?#iefix&v=3.0.1') format('embedded-opentype'),
    url('@{fa-font-path}/fontawesome-webfont.woff?v=3.0.1') format('woff'),
    url('@{fa-font-path}/fontawesome-webfont.ttf?v=3.0.1') format('truetype');
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

Same with CSS, except you edit the path in the @font-face declaration block:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'FontAwesome';
  src: url('your/path/fontawesome-webfont.eot?v=3.0.1');
  src: url('your/path/fontawesome-webfont.eot?#iefix&v=3.0.1') format('embedded-opentype'),
    url('your/path/fontawesome-webfont.woff?v=3.0.1') format('woff'),
    url('your/path/fontawesome-webfont.ttf?v=3.0.1') format('truetype');
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

I use the Official Font Awesome SASS Ruby Gem and fixed the error by adding the below line to my application.css.scss

@import "font-awesome-sprockets";

Explanation:

The font-awesome-sprockets file includes the sprockets assest helper Sass functions used for finding the proper path to the font file.


With the (free) Font Awesome 5 version, there's this tiny detail which was hard to figure out for me and I didn't pay attention to it:

Style   Availability    Style Prefix    Example Rendering
Solid   Free            fas             <i class="fas fa-camera"></i>
Brands  Free            fab             <i class="fab fa-font-awesome"></i>

(extracted from the documentation)

With this cited, brand icons such as fa-twitter or fa-react need to be used with class fab while all other (free) icons need to be used with class fas. That's easy to oversee.


I had this issue. The problem was I had a font-family CSS style with !important overriding the fontawesome font.


After struggling for finding a solution and NOT finding the official documentation helpful, this solved the issue for me:

  1. Download the Fontawesome.zip. I'm using version 5.10.2 and i got it from here https://fontawesome.com/download
  2. Inside the zip file there are several folders.You only need css and webfonts folders enter image description here

    1. Create 2 folders in your web projects, and name them css and webfonts. enter image description here

These names are mandatory. Now copy the content of css and webfonts from the zip into the corresponding folders in your project. And that's all!

Beware fontawesome! Awesomeness is making things simple for the user!


Use this

<link href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.2.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet">

I had similar issue with Amazon Cloudfront CDN but it got resolved after I started loading it from maxcdn


If you installed font-awesome via package manager (yarn or npm) then, please be aware which version was installed. Alternatively, if you've already installed font-awesome long time ago then, check what version was installed.

In essence, versions installed via package managers might be behind version that is shown on https://fontawesome.com/ website. Thus, as it is today (21.06.2019) package manager will install v4.7.0 as the latest version but, website will point to documentation that refers to v5.*.

Solution, visit the website that documents icons for v4.7.0 https://fontawesome.com/v4.7.0, copy appropriate icon e.g. <i class="fa fa-sign-in" aria-hidden="true"></i> and incorporate it into your html. More context can be found here.


If the MIME TYPE is already having the .woff and .woff2 file types and still it's giving HTTP-404 error, check the request filtering. If this is restrictive, add these file types these with allow to serve and it shall work. Check it out!


MUST WORK THIS WAY
1. make sure you have the fontawesome cdn linked in the top of your page fontawesome cdn
2. make sure the .fa class has not been given another font-family property. Usually this happens when we give all the tags in our page a style. like this

_x000D_
_x000D_
* {_x000D_
  font-family: Arial;_x000D_
}
_x000D_
_x000D_
_x000D_

instead use this

_x000D_
_x000D_
*:not(.fa){_x000D_
  font-family: Arial;_x000D_
}
_x000D_
_x000D_
_x000D_

  1. make sure you typed in the exact class name give in the fontawesome website. copy and paste to make sure.

_x000D_
_x000D_
<i class="fa fa-home"></i>
_x000D_
_x000D_
_x000D_


If you are using the version 5.* or greater, then you have to use the

all.css or all.min.css

Including the fontawesome.css does not work as it has no reference to the webfonts folder and there is no reference to the @font-face or font-family

You can inspect this by searching the code for the font-family property in fontawesome.css or fontawesome.min.css


Use this <i class="fa fa-camera-retro" ></i> you have not defined fa classes


I tried to solve the same problem with a few previous solutions, but they didn't work in my situation. Finally, I added these 2 lines in HEAD and it worked:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.3.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/assets/font-awesome/css/font-awesome.css">   

So many answers so I add my working for me (Change name if you dont use PRO): In _typography.less

//
//  Common
//  _____________________________________________

& when (@media-common = true) {
  .lib-font-face(
    @family-name: @font-family-name__fontawsomeregular,
    @font-path: '@{baseDir}fonts/webfonts/fa-regular-400',
    @font-weight: 400,
    @font-style: normal
  );
  .lib-font-face(
    @family-name: @font-family-name__fontawsomelight,
    @font-path: '@{baseDir}fonts/webfonts/fa-light-300',
    @font-weight: 300,
    @font-style: normal
   );
  .lib-font-face(
    @family-name: @font-family-name__fontawsomebrands,
    @font-path: '@{baseDir}fonts/webfonts/fa-brands-400',
    @font-weight: normal,
    @font-style: normal
  );
  .lib-font-face(
    @family-name: @font-family-name__fontawsomesolid,
    @font-path: '@{baseDir}fonts/webfonts/fa-solid-900',
    @font-weight: 900,
    @font-style: normal
  );
}

In _theme.less

@import '../includes/fontawesome/fontawesome.less';
@fa-font-path: '@{baseDir}fonts/webfonts';

//  Fonts
@font-family-name__fontawsomeregular: 'Font Awesome 5 Pro';
@font-family-name__fontawsomelight: 'Font Awesome 5 Pro';
@font-family-name__fontawsomebrands: 'Font Awesome 5 Brands';
@font-family-name__fontawsomesolid: 'Font Awesome 5 Pro';

and example of usage:

 .my-newclass:before{
     content: '\f002';
     display: inline-block;
     float: left;
     font-family:  @font-family-name__fontawsomelight;
     font-size: 16px;
}

Please add

@import 'https://****.net/*********/font-awesome.min.css';
@font-face {
    font-family: 'FontAwesome';
    src: url('https://****.net/*********/FontAwesome.otf');
    src: url('https://****.net/*********/FontAwesome.otf?#iefix')
}

This to top of your css, download and link the css and font correctly, the problem is due to FontAwesome not loading correctly.

Thanks


I tried a number of the suggestions above without success.

I use the NuGeT packages. The are (for some reason) multiple named version (font-awesome, fontawesome, font.awesome, etc.)

For what it's worth: I removed all the version installed and then only installed the latest version of font.awesome. font.awesome just worked without the need to tweak or configure anything.

I assume there are a number of things are missing from the other named versions.


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