[Firefox] Use the EmojiOne font bundled by Firefox 50+ under some OSes

[ronjouch]

To improve the experience for users running OSes failing to provide a satisfying font for emojis, Firefox started shipping an EmojiOne font since version 50: Bug 1231701 - Ship an emoji font on Windows XP-7 and Linux.

Since then, in both browser chrome (address bar, etc.) and content (web pages), Unicode emojis are rendered with this font.

→ It would be great to let the addon use this EmojiOne font too, rather than use its own icons. The benefits I see are: better homogeneity across the browser, and maybe piggybacking on some maintenance done by the Firefox team.

Maybe it would be controversial, in this case calling for a new setting :-/ .

Thanks for the addon 😄

[rugk]

That's a good idea. this would also allow to support Unicode 9 (see #73) as currently some smileys are still missing.

[elamperti]

I think the current set of icons used is ok because it allows you to see how the icon will look in GitHub. Adding a font has other problems: depending on the underlying operating system the icons would be rendered without colors, which isn't as good as having the current set of images. Handling emoji correctly across different platforms is a complex issue 😕

[rugk]

Adding a font has other problems

I think you did not understand the issue. New Firefox versions automatically ship with EmojiOne as a font and also use these smileys on GitHub. At least for platforms, which do not have native emoji fonts.

So the emojis would also be exactly the same as displayed on GitHub.

[elamperti]

@rugk oh! My bad. It would actually make sense then :)

[xem]

Could Firefox display EmojiOne's flag emojis?
Why doesn't it already do it?
Windows users have no decent flags on any browser, it'd be a big plus.

[rugk]

@xem This has nothing to do with this issue (as it does not seem to be about the ad-on), better report it at appropriate places.
However as a quick reply: AFAIK Firefox uses the Emojis of the platform first. So if Windows ships with some, it automatically uses these native ones instead of EmojiOne.

[xem]

indeed, and sorry for the off-topic