[zeveb]

Web Fonts abuse HTML: they take text and give it a different meaning. The letter 'a' does not indicate a daisy with pink petals; it is the letter 'a,' the English word 'a' and so forth.

Think for a moment about what Web Font users do: sprinkle garbage throughout their pages; run JavaScript to dynamically load stuff (and possible destroy the privacy and/or security of the client); dynamically update the page — all when a simple, semantic image could have done the trick.

It's kinda insane, like rendering a page by loading JavaScript to slowly append characters to the DOM.

[matthewmacleod]

That's just inaccurate – AFAIK all modern icon fonts make use of the Unicode PUA, which is specifically intended for this sort of application. The characters used have no semantic meaning beyond what the application, including its fonts, intend.

[zeveb]

> That's just inaccurate – AFAIK all modern icon fonts make use of the Unicode PUA, which is specifically intended for this sort of application.

Why, then, does one see all sorts of strange characters on web pages which use icon fonts?