replace the welcome text with the user's icon using elgg_view_entity_icon()

im doing a tutorial in the elgg 1.8 handbook to create my first plugin.
it says try experimenting by passing user to the icon function and it should output the html for the image.

<!--?php <br-->    
    /**
    * English language file
    */
    $mapping = array(
  'hello:world' => "world",
  'hello:dolly' => "Dolly",
  'hello:menu' => "Hello",
  'hello:sidebar:world'  => "Hello world",
  'hello:sidebar:dolly'  => "Hello dolly",
  'hello:user' => elgg_view_entity_icon()
  //"Hello, %s!"

);

add_translation('en', $mapping);

?>

but it doesnt output html to me, only a blank area. why? what did i do wrong?

Beginning Developers

Beginning Developers

This space is for newcomers, who wish to build a new plugin or to customize an existing one to their liking