This is the tenth post in a series examining modern CSS solutions to problems I've been solving over the last 13+ years of being a frontend developer. Visit ModernCSS.dev to view the whole series and additional resources.
This guide will build on the previous episode "CSS Button Styling Guide" to explore the use case of icon buttons. We'll cover icon + text as well as icon-only buttons.
Note: With SVG now having excellent support, the preferred practice is to use it for icon systems vs. icon fonts. We will not dive into SVGs specifically, but we will assume SVG icons are in use.
Icon + Text Button
First, let's do the easier extend from our current buttons, and drop an svg icon next to the text:
<a href="javascript:;" class="button">
<svg class="button__icon" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
viewBox="0 0 32 32" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false">
<path d="M32 12.408l-11.056-1.607-4.944-10.018-4.944 10.018-11.056 1.607 8 7.798-1.889 11.011 9.889-5.199 9.889 5.199-1.889-11.011 8-7.798z"></path>
</svg>
Button Link
</a>
There are 3 key features about the SVG for the icon + text use case:
- Use of a new
button__icon
class - The
viewBox
value is tight to the icon boundaries, ideally a square for best results across the icon set even if the values have variance (ex.24
vs.32
) - For accessibility, we apply:
-
aria-hidden="true"
- allows assistive tech to skip the SVG since it's decorative and not providing any semantic value not already provided by the visible button text -
focusable="false"
- prevents a "double focus" event in some version of IE
-
For more on accessibility of icon buttons: Read this excellent article by Sara Soueidan who is an expert on both accessibility and SVGs
Icon Styling for Icon + Text
Due to display: inline-flex
applied on the base .button
, and no width
attribute on the SVG, by default the icon is not yet visible.
So let's first add dimensions to our new .button__icon
class, using the em
unit to keep it relative to the font-size
in use:
.button__icon {
// You may wish to have your icons appear larger
// or smaller in relation to the text
width: 0.9em;
height: 0.9em;
}
According to the spec default, SVG parts including path
have a fill
of black. To adjust this, we will use the special keyword currentColor
which will extend the button's applied text color
to the SVG:
.button__icon {
// ...existing styles
fill: currentColor;
}
The last thing to adjust is to add a bit of spacing between the icon and button text, which we will again apply using the em
unit:
.button__icon {
// ...existing styles
margin-right: 0.5em;
}
We need to add one utility class to allow the icon to be placed after the text, or at the "end" of the button (for right-to-left languages). We zero out the existing margin, and flip it to the left:
.button__icon {
// ... existing styles
&--end {
margin-right: 0;
margin-left: 0.5em;
}
}
<a href="javascript:;" class="button">
Button Link
<svg class="button__icon button__icon--end" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
viewBox="0 0 32 32" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false">
<path d="M32 12.408l-11.056-1.607-4.944-10.018-4.944 10.018-11.056 1.607 8 7.798-1.889 11.011 9.889-5.199 9.889 5.199-1.889-11.011 8-7.798z"></path>
</svg>
</a>
Icon-Only Buttons
We're going to make the assumption that we want both regular buttons (with or without icons) in addition to icon-only buttons. This is important because we will reuse the .button
class in addition to a new class so that we don't have to redefine the resets and base visual styles. The overrides are minimal.
<a href="javascript:;" class="button icon-button" aria-label="Icon-only Button">
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 32 32"
aria-hidden="true" class="icon-button__icon" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false">
<path d="M32 12.408l-11.056-1.607-4.944-10.018-4.944 10.018-11.056 1.607 8 7.798-1.889 11.011 9.889-5.199 9.889 5.199-1.889-11.011 8-7.798z"></path>
</svg>
</a>
Changes from the icon + text button:
- Addition of the
icon-button
class to thea
- Addition of
aria-label="Icon-only Button"
to provide an accessible text alternative since we have removed the visual text - Swap of the class on the SVG to
icon-button__icon
Important: the value of the
aria-label
should describe what the button does not what the icon is. For further reading and other ways to provide a text alternative, see Sara Soueidan's article
Here's what we get before adjustments - an empty-looking button because we're back to the no-width problem:
First, let's create our new class. Due to the "C" in CSS, this rule needs to be placed after the .button
rule:
.icon-button {
width: 2.5rem;
height: 2.5rem;
border-radius: 50%;
padding: 0.35em;
&__icon {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
fill: currentColor;
}
}
We define a new width
and height
which is completely adjustable based on your design requirements, but it should equate to a square. This allows creation of a "circle" appearance when border-radius: 50%
is applied.
Then, we add a touch of padding (again to your tastes/design requirements) to add some breathing room between the SVG icon and the button boundary.
Next, we define our icon-button__icon
class. The difference here is that we want the width
and height
to match that of the container, so we set this to 100%
. This allows extending to multiple size icon-only buttons by only redefining the font-size
property on the .icon-button
class.
Here's the progress:
It's not quite what we want, but we can fix it by adjusting the following properties within the .button
class. We'll use the :not()
selector to exclude the properties meant only for regular buttons:
.button {
// ...existing styles
// Find these styles and update, not duplicate:
&:not(.icon-button) {
padding: 0.25em 0.75em;
min-width: 10ch;
min-height: 44px;
}
}
Now we have what we're after:
Demo
Includes use of the .button--small
class created in the previous episode, as well as a "real button" to validate that styles work just as well for both elements:
Try out ButtonBuddy to create accessible button colors. This web app I created will help get all the vectors of contrast right across your button color palette.
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