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I am looking for character which could replace image icon, for example like ✘ (xmark) and ✔ (tick), maybe some symbol to "draft" or "new message"?

EDIT:

Fav: ❤

Draft: ✍

Message: ✉

IProblemFactory
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12 Answers12

26

To find useful symbols, I have two great resources:

http://shapecatcher.com

Allows you to draw a shape, which it then searches for similarly shaped unicode symbols.

https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/index.htm

Lists unicode by the character blocks (using an embedded unicode font to maximize compatibility for display) and has a "display a certain block with images" functionality that allows you to review symbol blocks.

Both are quite useful though I often end up using shapecatcher these days just because it's a fun break just to be able to draw the shape that you want and have the site pull it up for you. At least, sometimes it will put it up.

Misc. Symbols Blocks

http://shapecatcher.com/unicode/block/Miscellaneous_Symbols_And_Pictographs is also a great category of unicode symbols, though as with all unicode, you may have to test compatibility.

https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/miscellaneous_symbols/images.htm is the block of the miscellaneous symbols, for comparison.

  • ⌚ U+0231A WATCH
  • ⌛ U+0231B HOURGLASS
  • ♟ U+265F SOLID CHESS PAWN
  • ⚷ U+26B7 CHIRON
  • ★ U+2605 SOLID STAR
  • ✓ U+2713 CHECK MARK
  • ☑ U+2611 SQUARE CHECKBOX
  • ✕ U+2715 MULTIPLICATION X
  • ☒ U+2612 SQUARE X-ED BOX
  • ⚠ U+26A0 WARNING SIGN

Are also good symbols to add to the list.

Edit: In 2019 I would now recommend using a robust icon pack, either in svg form or font-file form, the presentation of unicode is often less controllable for web developers.

Community
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Kzqai
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22

stackoverflow.com used to use "●" (U+25CF BLACK CIRCLE) for badges.

There are tons of useful characters in Unicode:

Joachim Sauer
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    On my current system, U+231B and U+2328 aren't showing as you document here, and the rest are really bad looking. – Mark Ransom Aug 27 '09 at 16:27
  • U+231B doesn't work here (Ubuntu 9.04). U+2706, U+260F and U+270E are indistinguishable, leaving only U+2709, U+260E and U+2328 and use. – Macha Aug 27 '09 at 16:36
  • Viewing this answer on Windows (Win7, Chrome) I see that most icons look ugly and the last two are missing. It seems Ubuntu has the whole Unicode-range-coverage down a lot better than a standard Windows installation. – Joachim Sauer Aug 27 '09 at 22:41
  • Windows XP / Firefox3.5, and only U+231B is not visible, though they all look bad at that size. Increasing the font size would probably help that though. – Matthew Scharley Sep 02 '09 at 12:14
  • Everything ok on Safari on Mac OS X Mountain Lion http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/3287/screenshot20121214at528.png – Vitim.us Dec 14 '12 at 19:33
  • If they look "bad" you can change the font – Sebastian Dec 11 '13 at 11:57
10

← ↑ → ↓ ↔ ↕ ↖ ↗ ↘ ↙

just to name a few...

Badfish
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8

Why not just peruse the whole list?

ceejayoz
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6

I've used the block-arrows: U+25b2 ▲, U+25ba ►, U+25bc ▼, U+25c4 ◄

Kzqai
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Ed Schembor
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5

Look at http://unicode.org/charts#symbols for some ideas. I'm not sure what would work for "draft" or "new message" but there is a lot to choose from there.

Kzqai
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Kyle Kochis
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4

Some symbols might not be supported by the font selected into the browser page. Even if they are, a lot of them look really bad at small sizes. You're better off using an image if you can.

Mark Ransom
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3

http://unicode-table.com/ is great too but for some unicodes designed for web design icons, i recommend : http://kudakurage.com/ligature_symbols/.

Plasebo
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2

Twitter Bootstrap uses × (×) for close buttons.

Dan Dascalescu
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1

I would suggest using custom font like https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome

You can also have svg/png version https://github.com/encharm/Font-Awesome-SVG-PNG

There are also other svg icons

  1. https://github.com/iconic/open-iconic
  2. https://github.com/outpunk/evil-icons
  3. Pure css icons https://github.com/saeedalipoor/icono

For Material Design you have static svg icons https://google.github.io/material-design-icons/ and animated:

  1. http://tympanus.net/Development/AnimatedSVGIcons/
  2. http://tympanus.net/Development/IconHoverEffects/
  3. http://tympanus.net/Development/AnimatedCheckboxes/
  4. https://alexk111.github.io/SVG-Morpheus/
rofrol
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1

I am surprised no one has posted Unicode emojis yet:

Range U+1F600 - U+1F64F

Just some from the list:

:U+1F601: GRINNING FACE WITH SMILING EYES &#128513
:U+1F602: FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY &#128514
:U+1F603: SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH &#128515
:U+1F604: SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND SMILING EYES &#128516
:U+1F605: SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND COLD SWEAT &#128517
:U+1F606: SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND TIGHTLY-CLOSED EYES &#128518
:U+1F637: FACE WITH MEDICAL MASK &#128567

Also have a look at this list of cool icons from Supplemental list

☣ : U+2623: BIOHAZARD SIGN &#9763
☢ : U+2622: RADIOACTIVE SIGN &#9762

Matas Vaitkevicius
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1

I've used the magnifying glass icon as the body of an anchor to link to a cool interactive page for some data analysis that allowed a user to pair arbitrary data selections much like this example.

 <a href="{{ url_for( 'interactiveParamExplorePage' ) }}" title="Explore merge column pairs.">&#x1F50E;</a>

Being a link the default underline appearance somewhat obscured the unicode glyph but that effect was negligible for our internal tool but might be suboptimal for something public facing.

demo magnifying glass Unicode glyph as link

jxramos
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