First Part of the question answered. Hope this will help another newbie.
{
" Call": "☎",
" Msg ": "◎",
" Msg-Rtnd": "◉"
}
When saved, it changed the Visual_editor insert special character box and makes buttons to insert the pretty icon pictures.. Rather clever.
Now. I don't know how to make the inserts lager, and I don't know how to colorise them.
HTML spans with CSS can do to both of those, but they are not part of characters and as such cannot be provided by quick access. In general we do not tool formatting options like colors, since they are not considered suitable for usage outside of carefully crafted templates.
If you really want that, you can create your own buttons or menu for that, but it is a tad harder to make those.
Where "we" means "the Wikipedias". Other wikis have more use for colors.
There are several feature requests for this, including phab:T54645 and phab:T66376. There's also a ticket somewhere in which we request background colors in tables, and if there is any justice in the world, it should include as an example a link to a diff of the product manager adding colors to a page by hand – the same product manager who told me that nobody really needed to be able to add colors to tables. ;-)
There is another reason not to be a fan. Accessibility is very hard to ensure if everyone can use colors. Using colors generally, is what people do when they have no way to communicate emphasis, but that's what <strong> and <em> are for. And those can be styled. (They too are not part of default wiki toolbar however)
Accessibility is also compromised when we expect people to keep their place in a 20-column data table, with nothing to help their eyes stay on the same line as they scan across. Green bar paper was invented for accessibility reasons, and the same needs exist on screen.
I agree that 20-column tables are incompatible with the goal of accessibility, and should be broken up.
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