Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

tdarb.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 208 posts

Re: Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

#51

Post by tbran »

ftio wrote: post #18

No no no. Hamburger menus are terrible[0] for navigation, and this is worse. The only user-centric "Pro" listed by the author, namely that users understand its functionality, is totally unsubstantiated, and I think, exactly the opposite of what is true. These kinds of menus are fine as "filtering inspiration", shortcuts for commonly chosen filters on a dataset, but they are not at all OK as general navigation. They h…

Please do go on! I'd love to hear more of you thoughts on better menus or better info architecture.

I have a project that could have many menu items, and the sausage is an interesting idea but not common/well known enough that I'd want to use it. Tabs might work.

For many websites, there are SEO implications to having menu links (or so we are lead to believe) so I think ridiculous menus are sometimes partly a consequence of optimizing for SEO.

Re: Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

#53

Post by satyrnein »

ftio wrote: post #18

No no no. Hamburger menus are terrible[0] for navigation, and this is worse. The only user-centric "Pro" listed by the author, namely that users understand its functionality, is totally unsubstantiated, and I think, exactly the opposite of what is true. These kinds of menus are fine as "filtering inspiration", shortcuts for commonly chosen filters on a dataset, but they are not at all OK as general navigation. They h…

If you have a huge number of top-level items, deeply consider your information architecture before downgrading to a hamburger menu.

Ir seems like you can hide all the items (hamburger menu), hide some of the items (sausage links or overflow menu), or have a deep hierarchical navigation.

While breadcrumbs were fairly established on desktop, mobile apps typically only have a single-level back/up button. It's easy to lose your place if you have a deep hierarchy. Are there are good solutions for this?

Re: Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

#54

Post by bentcorner »

css wrote: post #15

Horizontal scrolling should be avoided in almost all cases.

I'm curious about why horizontal scrolling feels so bad.

Like it works just fine in mapping apps, which naturally align to a 2d canvas, but why does it feel so lousy to use with almost any other form of information?

Is it because we write left-to-right, top-to-bottom? So text chunks fit better with no horizontal scrolling? (I think this is also why vertical tabs are so much better than horizontal tabs).

Re: Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

#55

Post by ilamont »

brimble wrote: post #48
ilamont wrote: post #5

When designing medium to large sized menu navigations on the mobile web the default go-to, for some time now, has been hamburger menus. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing Tell it to the many people who have no idea what it means on a mobile device, or increasingly on desktop websites. I've said it many times before, but it's worth repeating: Most people are frustrated by modern information tools. According to a 2015…

Firefox and Chrome have proven Apple right, in forcing a top-of-screen menu bar to appear whether the application wants it to or not. This was demonstrated to me recently when my parents couldn't figure out how to print on Windows in Firefox (because there's no standard menu on it—they know "file -> print" just fine) and called me for help. After a moment of confusion on my part as I remembered that FF doesn't have a…

I suspect many people reading this HN thread also serve as their family's tech support team. Every week I get calls or emails from my parents requesting help figuring out something that's not obvious from the UI, is accidentally triggered by users, deliberately activated (by the app) during a software update, or buried deep in some settings or submenu. This week's selection includes:

- Turning off yet again the annoying computer voice announcing any navigation or volume change on my parents' new Samsung TV (accessibility option, not sure why it turned on, but it required me visiting their home in person again to turn it off)

- Trying to help my father disable the "get Outlook for iOS" line that suddenly started to be appended to the bottom of his work emails.

- Helping my spouse troubleshoot a Shopify app feature that prevents >1 item being subtracted from inventory at a time

- Figuring out how to enable a social media save shared photos to her phone's photo album

Yes, sometimes software is so complicated and feature rich these items have to buried deep in the settings. But often I find that the lack of obvious text labels for basic features and navigation items is the problem. Hamburger menus and the three dots "more actions" icon are a poor substitute for clear text labels and links.

Re: Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

#57

Post by [deleted] »

at_a_remove wrote: post #30
dpcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, human beings have grown quite accustomed to using symbols to represent actions they need to take. In the United States, I remember learning about Mr. Yuck stickers by the time I was 4, or the shape and color of a stop sign, green means go, walk and don’t walk figures, even an exit sign always looked the same even if I couldn’t read. The hamburger menu takes someone explaining it to you just one time to know wha…

Mr. Yuck is green, Mr. Yuck is mean, Mr. Yuck also has the shape of a face absolutely filled with disgust at having put something terrible in his mouth. In short, Mr. Yuck communicates something purely by expression rather than association. The hamburger menu looks like decoration, or a portion of the I Ching. Nothing about three horizontal lines says "I contain options for navigation." Now, were six lines used, with…

[deleted]

Re: Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

#58

Post by chrisweekly »

cobertos wrote: post #26
ftio wrote: post #18

No no no. Hamburger menus are terrible[0] for navigation, and this is worse. The only user-centric "Pro" listed by the author, namely that users understand its functionality, is totally unsubstantiated, and I think, exactly the opposite of what is true. These kinds of menus are fine as "filtering inspiration", shortcuts for commonly chosen filters on a dataset, but they are not at all OK as general navigation. They h…

Horizontal scrolling isn't that bad on mobile devices. I wouldn't want to scroll one of these on desktop but it's so simple to just, flick through it with my finger on a phone. Just put it behind a media query when your desktop-sized nav bar gets too big?

Strong disagree. Horizontal scrolling ~= bad UX.

Re: Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

#59

Post by josho »

gowld wrote: post #45
at_a_remove wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mr. Yuck is green, Mr. Yuck is mean, Mr. Yuck also has the shape of a face absolutely filled with disgust at having put something terrible in his mouth. In short, Mr. Yuck communicates something purely by expression rather than association. The hamburger menu looks like decoration, or a portion of the I Ching. Nothing about three horizontal lines says "I contain options for navigation." Now, were six lines used, with…

It's an iconic representation of a list or menu. You learn it once, and it works everywhere. And it fits on a small screen.

I encourage you to go watch a novice computer user. After seeing them struggle I suspect you'll change your mind.

I personally view the hamburger menu similar to my junk drawer at home. It's where the designer stuffs crap that isn't very important. So, it's the last place I look for when I need to get something done in an app.

Re: Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

#60

Post by layer8 »

brimble wrote: post #48
ilamont wrote: post #5

When designing medium to large sized menu navigations on the mobile web the default go-to, for some time now, has been hamburger menus. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing Tell it to the many people who have no idea what it means on a mobile device, or increasingly on desktop websites. I've said it many times before, but it's worth repeating: Most people are frustrated by modern information tools. According to a 2015…

Firefox and Chrome have proven Apple right, in forcing a top-of-screen menu bar to appear whether the application wants it to or not. This was demonstrated to me recently when my parents couldn't figure out how to print on Windows in Firefox (because there's no standard menu on it—they know "file -> print" just fine) and called me for help. After a moment of confusion on my part as I remembered that FF doesn't have a…

That’s anecdotal, but my mother who "grew up" on DOS and Windows was never able to grasp the relationship between the top menu bar and the application window on MacOS. I bought her a Mac in 2010 because they are supposedly more intuitive and I didn’t want to provide PC support anymore, but it was no better than Windows for her at all (also not worse overall I guess).
Post reply on HN