What Unicode character do you use in your website? (instead of image icons)

Question

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:

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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.

Answer 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.

Answer 5

Twitter Bootstrap uses × (×) for close buttons.

Answer 6

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.