Badges & Icons

Posted 07 Jun 2024

Icons

Small icons are a nice thing to have, and are definitely nicer to have than just a long list of text. I was specifically looking for a resource of programming language icons, so that I could show the programming languages used per project without just pasting a wall of text.

Devicon turned out to be an amazing source, and has hundreds of development-related icons.

Another good one is simpleicons. They provide icons for brands, and ranges from programming languages to shoe brands and airlines. There are many ways to use it, so it’s actually pretty handy.

Badges

When I went to publish my Preftils package to JitPack, it suggested that:

Paste this in your README.md to add a badge:
[![](https://jitpack.io/v/HubbleCommand/preftils.svg)](https://jitpack.io/#HubbleCommand/preftils)

Given that it was super easy to do, I decided to look into adding status badges for different things in my repos. yt-dlp and the vscode rust extension have quite a few in their READMEs, and I generally like seeing these badges as I can quickly see things like version, downloads, CI status, etc.

After adding JitPack’s badge, I found the service shields.io that allows for making static and dynamic badges.

Below are some of the ones I’ve included in my repos.

GitHub

[![License Badge](https://img.shields.io/github/license/hubblecommand/run.svg?color=blue)](https://github.com/hubblecommand/run/blob/master/LICENSE)

A more advanced usage is to show the status of GitHub Actions workflows

VSCode marketplace

Taken from run

[![Ratings Badge](https://img.shields.io/vscode-marketplace/v/hcommand.run-runner.svg)](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hcommand.run-runner)
[![Downloads Badge](https://img.shields.io/vscode-marketplace/d/hcommand.run-runner.svg)](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hcommand.run-runner)
[![Ratings Badge](https://img.shields.io/vscode-marketplace/r/hcommand.run-runner.svg)](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hcommand.run-runner)

JitPack

Taken from preftils

[![Version Badge](https://jitpack.io/v/HubbleCommand/preftils.svg)](https://jitpack.io/#hubblecommand/preftils)
[![Downloads Badge](https://jitpack.io/v/HubbleCommand/preftils/month.svg)](https://jitpack.io/#hubblecommand/preftils)