Use FontAwesome or Glyphicons with css :before

Question

Is there any way to embed HTML in the css content: element when using a :before pseudo-element?

I want to use a Font Awesome (or Glyphicon) in a use case like this:

    h1:before {         content: "X";         padding-right: 10px;         padding-left: 10px;         color: @orangeLight;     } 

Where X is something like <i class="icon-cut"></i>.

I can, of course do this manually in HTML, but I really want to use :before in this case.

Similarly, is there any way to use <i> as a list bullet? This works, but doesn't behave correctly for multi-line bullet items:

<ul class="icons">   <li><i class="icon-ok"></i> Lists</li>   <li><i class="icon-ok"></i> Buttons</li>   <li><i class="icon-ok"></i> Button groups</li>   <li><i class="icon-ok"></i> Navigation</li>   <li><i class="icon-ok"></i> Prepended form inputs</li> </ul> 

Answer 1

What you are describing is actually what FontAwesome is doing already. They apply the FontAwesome font-family to the ::before pseudo element of any element that has a class that starts with "icon-".

[class^="icon-"]:before, [class*=" icon-"]:before {   font-family: FontAwesome;   font-weight: normal;   font-style: normal;   display: inline-block;   text-decoration: inherit; } 

Then they use the pseudo element ::before to place the icon in the element with the class. I just went to http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/ and inspected the code to find this:

.icon-cut:before {   content: "\f0c4"; } 

So if you are looking to add the icon again, you could use the ::after element to achieve this. Or for your second part of your question, you could use the ::after pseudo element to insert the bullet character to look like a list item. Then use absolute positioning to place it to the left, or something similar.

i:after{ content: '\2022';}