Font-awesome, input type 'submit'

Question

use button type="submit" instead of input

<button type="submit" class="btn btn-success">
    <i class="fa fa-arrow-circle-right fa-lg"></i> Next
</button>

for Font Awesome 3.2.0 use

<button type="submit" class="btn btn-success">
    <i class="icon-circle-arrow-right icon-large"></i> Next
</button>

HTML

Since <input> element displays only value of value attribute, we have to manipulate only it:

<input type="submit" class="btn fa-input" value="&#xf043; Input">

I'm using  entity here, which corresponds to the U+F043, the Font Awesome's 'tint' symbol.

CSS

Then we have to style it to use the font:

.fa-input {
  font-family: FontAwesome, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
}

Which will give us the tint symbol in Font Awesome and the other text in the appropriate font.

However, this control will not be pixel-perfect, so you might have to tweak it by yourself.

You can use font awesome utf cheatsheet

<input type="submit" class="btn btn-success" value="&#xf011; Login"/>

here is the link for the cheatsheet http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/cheatsheet/

Well, technically it's not possible to get :before and :after pseudo elements work on input elements

From W3C:

12.1 The :before and :after pseudo-elements

Authors specify the style and location of generated content with the :before and :after pseudo-elements. As their names indicate, the :before and :after pseudo-elements specify the location of content before and after an element's document tree content. The 'content' property, in conjunction with these pseudo-elements, specifies what is inserted.

---

So I had a project where I had submit buttons in the form of input tags and for some reason the other developers restricted me to use <button> tags instead of the usual input submit buttons, so I came up with another solution, of wrapping the buttons inside a span set to position: relative; and then absolutely positioning the icon using :after pseudo.

Note: The demo fiddle uses the content code for FontAwesome 3.2.1 so you may need to change the value of content property accordingly.

HTML

<span><input type="submit" value="Send" class="btn btn-default" /></span>

CSS

input[type="submit"] {
    margin: 10px;
    padding-right: 30px;
}

span {
    position: relative;
}

span:after {
    font-family: FontAwesome;
    content: "\f004"; /* Value may need to be changed in newer version of font awesome*/
    font-size: 13px;
    position: absolute;
    right: 20px;
    top: 1px;
    pointer-events: none;
}

Demo

Now here everything is self explanatory here, about one property i.e pointer-events: none;, I've used that because on hovering over the :after pseudo generated content, your button won't click, so using the value of none will force the click action to go pass through that content.

From Mozilla Developer Network :

In addition to indicating that the element is not the target of mouse events, the value none instructs the mouse event to go "through" the element and target whatever is "underneath" that element instead.

Hover the heart font/icon Demo and see what happens if you DON'T use pointer-events: none;

You can use button classes btn-link and btn-xs with type submit, which will make a small invisible button with an icon inside of it. Example:

<button class="btn btn-link btn-xs" type="submit" name="action" value="delete">
    <i class="fa fa-times text-danger"></i>
</button>

Also possible like this

<button type="submit" class="icon-search icon-large"></button>