Given that font awesome icons are used a lot in web based software, being able to natively use these icons in confluence would be a great improvement to the current functionality.

In #39365 a corresponding issue "being able to create custom icons" had been closed referring the author to a workaround with an add-on that allowed using font awesome in confluence. (Font Awesome Icons for Confluence by Argonio ltd.) This add-on still does not support Confluence 6 and the workaround therefore is not feasible. A user had asked whether this add-on would support confluence 6 at some point in december 2016 and never received an answer.

A second similar add-on (Awesome Icons by Rumpelcoders) only supports Confluence Server.

Aside from that, being able to create custom icons and using a predefined font that includes icons are different issues. I therefore created this as a separate suggestion. PNGs of the needed icons can not be used inline in the way font awesome icons could.