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Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

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

#81

Post by the_pwner224 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #67
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…

> I like the sausage link concept because it clearly labels options with text. 100%. I'm kinda surprised how the 3 lines hamburger menu got so prevalent in the first place, because it always user tests poorly. My guess is that when flat minimalism (my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean) was the rage, even though user t…

> my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean

What is this referring to?

Edit: I'm so used to these buttons that I didn't even realize they were just simple flat shapes. It definitely would be confusing for someone new to Android or for someone who's not good with tech.

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

#82

Post by oh_boy »

dpcan wrote: post #8

I think this would be a problem in terms of accessibility. Gestures are required, text disappears horizontally, no visual indicator that you may have to scroll horizontally… I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve also been a fan of the hamburger menu since it arrived.

This isn't less accessible than a hamburger menu. Even the opposite might be the case as defacto most hamburger menus are implemented without proper focus handing or correct aria attributes for announcing open/closed states.

With the sausage menu, at least as screenreader user, you will have less issues as you can tab through a list of links immediately without the need to open a broken menu . Also scroll position is adjusted by the browser automatically to the element in focus, so it isn't even a problem for keyboard users with eyesight.

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

#83

Post by throwawayben »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #81
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like the sausage link concept because it clearly labels options with text. 100%. I'm kinda surprised how the 3 lines hamburger menu got so prevalent in the first place, because it always user tests poorly. My guess is that when flat minimalism (my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean) was the rage, even though user t…

> my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean What is this referring to? Edit: I'm so used to these buttons that I didn't even realize they were just simple flat shapes. It definitely would be confusing for someone new to Android or for someone who's not good with tech.

The soft buttons on Android: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YKCPp.png

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

#84

Post by ridgered4 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #67
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…

> I like the sausage link concept because it clearly labels options with text. 100%. I'm kinda surprised how the 3 lines hamburger menu got so prevalent in the first place, because it always user tests poorly. My guess is that when flat minimalism (my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean) was the rage, even though user t…

But seriously, what does the hamburger icon mean?

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

#85

Post by kaba0 »

rmetzler wrote: post #36
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…

Icons don’t work with on page search (e.g CTRL+F). And it’s hard to describe icons to someone else on the phone. I‘m not sure if Word is still the mess it used to be, but this kind of interface design can be really hard to understand and learn. Currently for me this is Blender. The software is complex, the interface mirrors this, but if you’re new to it, this is really hard to learn.

I guess after a point it is simply inherent complexity. Like, I can’t even imagine a GUI that would make someone seeing it for the first time know some semi-advanced feature in Word.

First of all, the whole problem domain has to be taught/discovered. And sure, people often learn by trial-and-error and it makes sense to try to maximalize this sort of discoverability in all software, but I would say that it doesn’t scale. Even with the “better” labeled menus, gimp is not intuitive to say the least.

So perhaps the (often annoying) teach you by showing is the better direction? My gripe with it is that it is often applied for trivial mobile apps for things like “search by using the search bar”.. but I think an all-menu/all-action text-based search functionality would be a must as well.

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

#86

Post by ziml77 »

layer8 wrote: post #73
brimble wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent years thinking they [EDIT: Apple's always-top-of-screen application menus, that is] were dumb for that reason. It never occurred to me that major software vendors would be stupid and/or user-hating enough to ditch the standard top menu, when they have a whole bunch of stuff that should go in it.

The top menu made sense when computer screens were small and the mouse pointer thus never far away from the top, and applications were fullscreen most of the time anyway.

To me it seems the top menu bar is a holdover from early Mac OS. I saw a demo of one of the early versions of the OS, and it made a ton of sense there. The OS could only run a single application at a time, but that application could have multiple windows. From that perspective it's very sensible that whichever application had full control over the screen would want a menu bar global to its own windows.

Now though, it's just weird to have the menu bar at the top of the screen. And it's especially strange when there's no windows for the application left but the menu bar for it is still visible (something that wouldn't be strange in the single app at a time model)

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

#87

Post by qwertox »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #81
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like the sausage link concept because it clearly labels options with text. 100%. I'm kinda surprised how the 3 lines hamburger menu got so prevalent in the first place, because it always user tests poorly. My guess is that when flat minimalism (my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean) was the rage, even though user t…

> my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean What is this referring to? Edit: I'm so used to these buttons that I didn't even realize they were just simple flat shapes. It definitely would be confusing for someone new to Android or for someone who's not good with tech.

I believe the navigation buttons on the bottom. I see no issue with them, since it's easy to associate the left triangle with back, the circle with something that affects everything and the square with something else which does something which is obvious once you tap it.

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

#88

Post by rustyminnow »

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 know this is besides your point, but in Firefox there is an option to turn the menu bar back on (at least until they remove the option :/).

If you go to the "Customize Toolbar" page, on the bottom left where it says "Toolbars v" you can check "[ ] Menu Bar". Hope that helps (a little)!

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

#89

Post by II2II »

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…

The other thing to note is that traffic signs are designed to alert people of one particular thing and are intended to be language neutral. Hamburger menus are designed to conceal multiple things and the contents are usually in a specific language.

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

#90

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #81
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like the sausage link concept because it clearly labels options with text. 100%. I'm kinda surprised how the 3 lines hamburger menu got so prevalent in the first place, because it always user tests poorly. My guess is that when flat minimalism (my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean) was the rage, even though user t…

> my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean What is this referring to? Edit: I'm so used to these buttons that I didn't even realize they were just simple flat shapes. It definitely would be confusing for someone new to Android or for someone who's not good with tech.

In Android[0], the "back" button on the bottom is a triangle pointing left. The "home" button is a circle. The "show recent apps" button is a square. All are just flat shapes.

Completely unintuitive to anybody that's never used Android before.

Contrast that to the early days of Android where the Back button was a curved arrow, the Home button was an icon of a house, and the Menu button was the hamburger menu people are familiar with, except the lines were thinner.

[0] This may actually vary depending on what phone you have and if the maker changes these, but on my Pixel 6, this is the description.

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