People complaining that there's nothing 'ligature' about the font seem to be too harsh / don't like this particular take on the subject.
"In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph." (Wikipedia)
I consider the (ab)use of ligatures a clever term for the font, considering that it _does_ something related (replacing the text 'file' with a file icon/symbol).
I also actually prefer the idea of having actual, meaningful words (which I consider accessible and memorable, much more than any abbreviation) in the source.
No idea if this is useful in the wild, but the hack is clever and interesting. Why shoot it down?
These are icons, not ligatures.
The use of ligatures for icons is ingenious!
I'd speculate that someone's released a font of ligatures that uses the PUA, so this person thinks that's what the PUA is called.
Clever, but I don't know if I consider that a good idea.
It all depends on usage. If you're using it next to text, then getting "Login Login" is annoying. If you're using icons only (which has debatable standards), then yes.
edit: looking at it more closely, you'd have to specify the font just for the icon you want to use - if you used it for text, the ligatures would screw you up in short order. Try typing the word 'tileset' or 'padlock' in the box, for example. So if you're going to specify a font only for icons... why not just use the icon image alt text for screenreaders? (as suggested below)
A cute idea, but not sure of the pragmatic applications.
Does anybody know what support exists (or is required) for ligatures across common browsers?