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The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

deep.design

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Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#141

Post by bane »

abalone wrote: post #86

It's very interesting that Apple just adopted a hamburger menu for their apple.com redesign (mobile version). They even told everyone not to use hamburger menus at last year's WWDC! [1] [1] WWDC 2014 Session 211 Designing Intuitive User Experiences @ 32:00, available here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/ Addendum: It's a responsive design so you can see this even on a desktop browser just by shrinking t…

Apple is very very good at telling everybody else what not to do, then going and doing it themselves.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#142

Post by capex »

In a substantial app like Facebook or Spotify, the hamburger menu is still there, in addition to the thumb-able tabs. Large applications have a significant navigation structure, and you can't reduce them to 3 or 4 tabs. While the OP's arguments are good, is there a valid alternative?

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#143

Post by danneu »

The hamburger menu's entire value is that it's a simple default that you can generalize even programmatically across all websites. It's why the frameworks mentioned in the article can implement it for you. It's a place to start.

But it requires some deliberate thought, effort, and app-specific solutions to replace it with something better, and that planning makes you answer all sorts of hard questions you might've not ever had to answer about your website/product, like "how are my users actually using this?"

I'd wager that everyone agrees that their own site's hamburger menu is a sore spot, suboptimal.

But the next rung up is a taller order than these types of articles admit.

I think a good follow-up blog post would be "Design patterns for escaping the hamburger menu" that showcases a variety of real-world approaches.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#144

Post by threesixandnine »

shampine wrote: post #17
freshyill wrote: post #6

It is almost always preferable to have all of your options available to the user at all times. However, it's very important to make the distinction between apps and websites when talking about a hamburger menu. A tab bar is great in an iOS app with a limited scope of functionality. That just doesn't work a sprawling news site covering dozens of topics. A small, product-focused website may even be able to get away wit…

I keep reading these articles about how awful hamburgers are but so far not a single one addresses menus that have more than 3-5 items. I manage sites that we have kicked around ideas for how to deal with the menu better, but the size of what is in that menu makes all the proposed ideas I've seen not feasible. So I'm right there with you that it is unfortunate, I wish these articles had more in way of solutions than…

How about menu on front page only and driving visitors around with breadcrumbs?

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#146

Post by zanny »

kazinator wrote: post #134

The desktop Firefox has one of these. It's been quite unintuitive. It contains some commands depicted by icons, which constitute an overlapping set of the functionality under the regular F)ile menu, like "New Window", "New Private Window", "Print" and whatnot. But there are commands that appear in other menus: the monkey wrench Developer icon appears to have similar content to "Tools/Web Developer". I think what we a…

This is what I use it for. When I do mobile bootstrap I'll always have something else in navs besides the hamburger, and treat it as overflow.

A hamburger on its own is, like the article says, dead weight with no meaning. If its on a bar with a bunch of other nav options and you feel like the one you want is missing you often use it.

If I ever get around to it I'll hack up the bootstrap code and make it tab based (icon + text underneath) but that seems like a PITA with how bootstrap does its layouts in nav bars from my paltry experience.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#147

Post by a3n »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #56
dperfect wrote: post #36

Before hamburger menus became popular, weren't people complaining about the exact opposite problem? That is, if you break out the menu items into more prominent interface elements (e.g., tab bar items), then you're at risk of cluttering your visual design with less-common functions. As in all things design, I suppose a balance needs to be found, but I personally don't find anything wrong with a hamburger menu per se.…

> I personally don't find anything wrong with a hamburger menu per se. The trouble, which the article describes with some case studies on engagement before and after hamburger menu implementations, is that people who are not you are confused by it and don't understand it to be a menu. fwiw, I've encountered this quite a bit when helping users switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox or Chrome -- both of which use the…

> The trouble, which the article describes with some case studies on engagement before and after hamburger menu implementations, is that people who are not you are confused by it and don't understand it to be a menu.

I confess I'd seen these for awhile before it dawned on me "you should totally click that!"

And today I learned what they're called.

As I saw the headline a few times at work, waiting to get home before I read it, I tried to imagine what a hamburger menu might be (and I never guessed it was what it is).

I imagined the menu at a hamburger store like McD's. And what most looks like that is the columns of small print links at the bottom of big kids' sites like Amazon. (And do those have a name?)

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#148

Post by stirlo »

abalone wrote: post #86

It's very interesting that Apple just adopted a hamburger menu for their apple.com redesign (mobile version). They even told everyone not to use hamburger menus at last year's WWDC! [1] [1] WWDC 2014 Session 211 Designing Intuitive User Experiences @ 32:00, available here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/ Addendum: It's a responsive design so you can see this even on a desktop browser just by shrinking t…

The difference is that Apple still has links at the bottom of the page for when the reader gets there. In fact the first link is "Shop & Learn" which expands out to be the same product listing as the Hamburger menu up the top.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#149

Post by cdcarter »

function_seven wrote: post #139
Dylan16807 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't you also have a third button to list available actions, or would you throw that away? Overloading the select button would be just as confusing; I hope you don't want to do that.

Ok, ok. How about these buttons? [Select] [DO!] [Context] You're right of course. At some point a trade off has to be made among usability, discover-ability, and simplicity. (Pick any two). Adding another button reduces simplicity, but enhances the other two. Apple's one-button mouse—at the other extreme—makes things simple and discoverable, but often not as useable as I'd like. I still don't know how OSX's equivalen…

I think the closest is Cmd-Shift-/.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#150

Post by hyperhopper »

bane wrote: post #141
abalone wrote: post #86

It's very interesting that Apple just adopted a hamburger menu for their apple.com redesign (mobile version). They even told everyone not to use hamburger menus at last year's WWDC! [1] [1] WWDC 2014 Session 211 Designing Intuitive User Experiences @ 32:00, available here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/ Addendum: It's a responsive design so you can see this even on a desktop browser just by shrinking t…

Apple is very very good at telling everybody else what not to do, then going and doing it themselves.

Nobody should buy the iPhone 6 according to them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O99m7lebirE

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