Font glyphs versus SVG sprites for Devicon: minimizing requests or enabling multi-color styling?

Answer: Use SVG sprites for multi-color icons, font glyphs only if you can accept single-color styling

The requirement for occasional dual-tone icons is the decisive factor. Devicon's font glyph approach cannot natively render multi-color icons—doing so would require stacked character techniques or pseudo-element hacks that add complexity and may not align with your visual design.

Confirmed trade-offs

• SVG sprites provide native support for per-path fills, enabling true multi-color icons without workarounds. They require one HTTP request for the sprite file (or zero if inlined) plus inline markup for each <use> element.
• Font glyphs deliver all icons in two requests (CSS + WOFF2) and support color changes via the CSS color property, but remain single-colored unless you implement complex stacking.
• Browser support favors fonts: IE8+ for fonts versus IE9+ for SVG sprites (or a polyfill).

Recommendation

For your dual-tone requirement, SVG sprites are the correct choice. The single SVG request satisfies the ≤2 request constraint, and the HTML markup for each <use> is typically lightweight compared to network overhead.

Mitigation for SVG sprite weaknesses

1. Consistent sizing: Apply explicit width and height to SVG elements or use a CSS class to standardize dimensions across icons.
2. Vertical alignment: SVGs inherit the element's line-height and vertical-align by default. Use vertical-align: baseline or display: inline-block to achieve predictable alignment without extra line-height adjustments.
3. Build integration: Ensure your build process correctly generates the sprite file and updates <use> references. Devicon's current sprite structure uses <symbol id="iconname"> format, so references should be <svg><use xlink:href="#iconname"></svg>.

Verification steps

• Confirm target browser support: if IE8 compatibility is required, fonts are the only viable option. Otherwise, SVG sprites are safe for IE9+ and all modern browsers.
• Measure actual request count in your deployment environment. Inlining the SVG sprite eliminates the HTTP request entirely but increases HTML payload.
• Test multi-color rendering in your specific use case to ensure the sprite paths support the intended color scheme.

Uncertainty: If your project has strict legacy browser requirements (IE8), font glyphs remain necessary despite the multi-color limitation. Otherwise, SVG sprites are the recommended path.