That's right. For the first time ever you can now build your own icon fonts with the Pictos Server! It's easy: choose any icon in the Pictos Library and assign a keyboard key that will correspond with that icon. Use as many or as few icons as you'd like, even change them on the fly!
It's free for the first 10 days, so try it out!
It works similar to Typekit in that you paste a Pictos code snippet into your HTML and the Pictos Server will serve your custom made icon font straight to your website. However, the Pictos snippet does not rely on javascript and is simply a CSS <link> tag.
Pick from any of the 650 icons in the Pictos Library and build an unlimited number of fonts. Build a separate icon combination for each of your projects. Even change the icon combination on the fly!
Choosing which icons are a part of the fonts you build means you'll get the fastest possible download speeds for your website, since you won't be loading in icons you don't actually need or use.
Load Speed & File Size: Typically, you use image sprites to render icons on the web. If you have a hover state and an active (pressed) state for those icons, your sprite will be three times larger than it needs to be. By using a font instead you can load in the icons once and use CSS to change their look for hover and active states. Not only that, but a font made up of twelve icons will have a smaller file size than an image sprite with the same number of icons.
Scalability: Image sprites cannot be scaled up. Vectors or fonts can. By using a font to render your icons, you can scale them to any size and they will not lose any quality.
Design on the Fly: Using a font to render icons enables you to change the look and feel of your icons on the fly using CSS. This is extremely useful and powerful when changing or updating your interface via user interaction or for creating themes.
Browser Support: Custom fonts are supported on all modern browsers; IE supports them all the way back to version 4!
Add as many domains as you'd like to your account. The Pictos Server will only serve fonts to the domains you specify. You can even specify localhost or these local IPs: 10.0.1.x & 127.0.0.x for local development. Wildcard subdomains are also supported by using this format: *.site.com
Need to serve fonts yourself? With a Pictos Server account you can buy a downloadable version of any font you build starting at just $19! The license included even allows you to use the fonts on multiple domains. You can even re-download purchased fonts whenever you need.
Need a plan with more than 4 million pageviews? Contact me: drew@pictos.cc
Using the Pictos Font and CSS3 you can make some awesome & lightweight toolbars.
Try clicking the icons. View in Webkit for best results. Zero images used.
Complex lighting, shadowing and gradient effects made possible by CSS3.
Try hovering over this area.
Since it is just a normal font, you can use it inline with other text.