Change Font Awesome icon on :hover

Question

I hope this question was not already asked somewhere in this forum. I swear I searched it!

My goal is to change the "tag" icon when mouse is over it. Namely, I would like to let the "tags" icon appear replacing the old one.

I am quite sure there is an easy solution out there; probably using

.fa-tag:hover {
 background: url(something);
}

Here the page of my website with the .fa-tag icons : http://wordsinthebucket.com/about

Thank you in advance for your attention.

Answer 1

I would have two icons but have only one visible at a time, toggling them based on :hover state. I feel this is more flexible then messing with background.

.change-icon > .fa + .fa,
.change-icon:hover > .fa {
  display: none;
}
.change-icon:hover > .fa + .fa {
  display: inherit;
}

<link href="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/4.2.0/css/font-awesome.css" rel="stylesheet" />

<span class="change-icon">
  Tags
  <i class="fa fa-tags"></i>
  <i class="fa fa-gear"></i>
</span>

Answer 2

.fa-camera-retro:hover:before{
    content: "\f02d";
}

demo - http://www.bootply.com/oj2Io7btD7

you will need to change the content of :before pseudo element on hover

here is the list of complete fontawesome content codes

http://astronautweb.co/snippet/font-awesome/