Button icons

Adding Icons to Buttons

The jQuery Mobile framework includes a selected set of icons most often needed for mobile apps. To minimize download size, jQuery Mobile includes a single white icon sprite, and automatically adds a semi-transparent black circle behind the icon to ensure that it has good contrast on any background color.

An icon can be added to a button by adding a data-icon attribute on the anchor specifying the icon to display. For example, the following markup:

<a href="index.html" data-role="button" data-icon="delete">Delete</a>

Creates this button with an icon:

Delete

A more compact button with the data-inline="true" attribute added to the button:

Delete

Icon set

The following data-icon attributes can be referenced to create the icons shown below:

Left arrow - data-icon="arrow-l"

My button

Right arrow - data-icon="arrow-r"

My button

Up arrow - data-icon="arrow-u"

My button

Down arrow - data-icon="arrow-d"

My button

Delete - data-icon="delete"

My button

Plus - data-icon="plus"

My button

Minus - data-icon="minus"

My button

Check - data-icon="check"

My button

Gear - data-icon="gear"

My button

Refresh - data-icon="refresh"

My button

Forward - data-icon="forward"

My button

Back - data-icon="back"

My button

Grid - data-icon="grid"

My button

Star - data-icon="star"

My button

Alert - data-icon="alert"

My button

Info - data-icon="info"

My button

Home - data-icon="home"

My button

Search - data-icon="search"

My button

Icon positioning

By default, all icons in buttons are placed to the left of the button text.

Delete

This default may be overridden using the data-iconpos attribute to set the icon to the right, above (top) or below (bottom) the text. For example, the markup:

<a href="index.html" data-role="button" data-icon="delete" data-iconpos="right">Delete</a>

Creates this button with right-aligned icon:

Delete

Icons can also be positioned above the text by specifying data-iconpos="top"

Delete

Or icons can also be positioned below the text by specifying data-iconpos="bottom"

Delete

You can also create an icon-only button, by setting the data-iconpos attribute to notext. The button plugin will hide the text on-screen, but add it as a title attribute on the link to provide context for screen readers and devices that support tooltips. For example, replacing data-iconpos="right" on the previous example with data-iconpos="notext":

<a href="index.html" data-role="button" data-icon="delete" data-iconpos="notext">Delete</a>

Creates this icon-only button:

Delete

Mini & Inline

The mini and inline attributes can be added to produce more compact buttons:

Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete

Custom Icons

To use custom icons, specify a data-icon value that has a unique name like myapp-email and the button plugin will generate a class by prefixing ui-icon- to the data-icon value and apply it to the button: ui-icon-myapp-email.

You can then write a CSS rule in your stylesheet that targets the ui-icon-myapp-email class to specify the icon background source. To maintain visual consistency with the rest of the icons, create a white icon 18x18 pixels saved as a PNG-8 with alpha transparency.

In this example, we're just pointing to a standalone icon image, but you could just as easily use an icon sprite and specify the positioning instead, just like the icon sprite we use in the framework.

.ui-icon-myapp-email {
	background-image: url("app-icon-email.png");
}

This will create the standard resolution icon, but many devices now have very high resolution displays, like the retina display on the iPhone 4. To add a HD icon, create an icon that is 36x36 pixels (exactly double the 18 pixel size), and add second rule that uses the -webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2 media query to target a rule only to high resolution displays. Specify the background image for the HD icon file and set the background size to 18x18 pixels which will fit the 36 pixel icon into the same 18 pixel space. The media query block can wrap multiple icon rules:

@media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) {
	.ui-icon-myapp-email {
		background-image: url("app-icon-email-highres.png");
		background-size: 18px 18px;
	}
	...more HD icon rules go here...
}

Icons and themes

The semi-transparent black circle behind the white icon ensures good contrast on any background color so it works well with the jQuery Mobile theming system. Here are examples of the same icons sitting on top of a range of different color swatches with themed buttons.

Swatch "A" themed buttons

Swatch "B" themed buttons

Swatch "C" themed buttons