Font Awesome icon inside text input element

Issue

I am trying to insert a user icon inside username input field.

I've tried one of the solution from the similar question knowing that background-image property won't work since Font Awesome is a font.

The following is my approach and I can't get the icon display.

.wrapper input[type="text"] {
    position: relative;
}

.wrapper input[type="text"]:before {
    font-family: 'FontAwesome';
    position: absolute;
    top: 0px;
    left: -5px;
    content: "\f007";
}

I have font face declared in the default font awesome css so I wasn't sure if adding font-family above was the right approach.

 @font-face {
     font-family: 'FontAwesome';
     src: url('../Font/fontawesome-webfont.eot?v=3.2.1');
     src: url('../Font/fontawesome-webfont.eot?#iefix&v=3.2.1') format('embedded-opentype'), url('../Font/fontawesome-webfont.woff?v=3.2.1') format('woff'), url('../Font/fontawesome-webfont.ttf?v=3.2.1') format('truetype'), url('../Font/fontawesome-webfont.svg#fontawesomeregular?v=3.2.1') format('svg');
 }

Solution

You're right. :before and :after pseudo content is not intended to work on replaced content like img and input elements. Adding a wrapping element and declare a font-family is one of the possibilities, as is using a background image. Or maybe a html5 placeholder text fits your needs:

<input name="username" placeholder="&#61447;">

Browsers that don’t support the placeholder attribute will simply ignore it.

UPDATE

The before content selector selects the input: input[type="text"]:before. You should select the wrapper: .wrapper:before. See http://jsfiddle.net/allcaps/gA4rx/ . I also added the placeholder suggestion where the wrapper is redundant.

.wrapper input[type="text"] {
        position: relative; 
    }
    
    input { font-family: 'FontAwesome'; } /* This is for the placeholder */
    
    .wrapper:before {
        font-family: 'FontAwesome';
        color:red;
        position: relative;
        left: -5px;
        content: "\f007";
    }

    
    <p class="wrapper"><input placeholder="&#61447; Username"></p>

Fallback

Font Awesome uses the Unicode Private Use Area (PUA) to store icons. Other characters are not present and fall back to the browser default. That should be the same as any other input. If you define a font on input elements, then supply the same font as fallback for situations where us use an icon. Like this:

input { font-family: 'FontAwesome', YourFont; }

Answered By - allcaps