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Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)

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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to recall Steve Jobs saying the reason the menu is at the top of the screen is that it's easier to hit it with the mouse, you just push it all the way up. I think it's a valid point.

At the same time they don't utilize the 4 most easy to reach points of the screen, the corners. Windows always used those for essential interactions so the interface was really fast to use: for the start menu just throw your mouse to the bottom left corner; to close the window throw your mouse to the top right corner; to show your desktop throw to to bottom right; not sure anymore about the other corner as I am on Ma…

Apple has Hot Corners (configurable in the Desktop & Screen Saver > Screen Saver section of Settings) that can replicate some of the functionality that you described.

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

#202

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…

Not quite, the usage of lines are still conveying something, it's similar to pause, play, stop on media players, it's similar to back, forward and refresh icons on the browser. Line based symbols are easy to pick up and have been picked up by users from our testing, I'm really not sure what studies you're referring to (?) For an actual shitty example, look at Macos window button controls. Red yellow and green circles…

> I'm really not sure what studies you're referring to (?)

We did multiple usability studies over years for a company I worked at that built a very popular mobile app. The tests were standard usability test format, where we'd ask a user to complete a task and then just say "go" and figure it out. Times where the user had to find something in the hamburger menu, when we replaced the 3 lines with words like "MENU" or "MORE" always tested better.

Designers pretty much universally hated the text version, and I do appreciate the localization challenges, but the results weren't ambiguous.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the three dots look like the ellipsis, which has a standard meaning of "there's even more..." At the end of a list of other menu entries, there's a chance that it can be inferred to mean "let's me see some more".

I take the 3 lines to mean "click/press here for a list of something". Perhaps because people called it a hamburger, that created some extra mental friction, contributing to the confusion/hate?

I think it made more sense as a list when it was contained within a rectangle, suggesting a paper with written text.

Just the lines is abstract geometry, like the navigation buttons on android; they don't mean anything on their own.

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

#204
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…

Personally, I dislike sausage links as well. Horizontal scrolling is a pain in the ass on a desktop computer with a mouse. Vertical scrolling is much more natural. Please, try to make use of the ample screen real estate on my system as that's the entire reason I own a 4K monitor.

I'd be less frustrated if I could file bugs that would get to the developers of an app / website / etc and get the issues that drive me nuts fixed. Take Google Maps: it has built in menu options to report data errors, but what about bugs with the software itself? Sometime last year a bug was introduced where if I start typing the address in "too fast" before the page finishes loading, the address characters will appear out-of-order. It's a classic FIFO / LIFO ordering bug. I suppose it's my fault for thinking I could type as soon as the text widget becomes visible on the page.

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

#205
post #184
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there kindof are, though it's very inconsistent. For example, yesterday I installed the AdGuard app, which adds a proxy and some Extensions.. When I finally realized I didn't need it and it was a paid service, and I really just needed the free AdGuard DNS, I dragged the icon to the trash.... And that also prompted me to confirm that it would delete the proxy and the Extensions that were installed. I remember a few mo…

> And that also prompted me to confirm that it would delete the proxy and the Extensions that were installed. I would be interested if someone could point me to the mechanism used for that (triggering application-specific uninstall logic upon dragging the application to the trash).

Good question, I unfortunately have no idea of the mechanisms for this, I just know they exist and have encountered them before as a user...

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

#207
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sca…

In MacOS you can search the menu of GUI apps. This helps discovery so much.

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

#208

Perhaps a little mean, but its odd that this article about website design is plaintext with maximum contrast and default font, and the viewport to the code pen is so small I can't even see what it's trying to show me without clicking through

Why would that be mean? That's great, readable design...

Sorry its a bit of a late reply, but I'm not against text-focused simple content, it is indeed great. But some simple css rules would have gone a long way here. Choosing a readable font, making the codepen iframe a bit bigger so you can actually see the thing the author wants to show and either changing background to like #222 or the text color to #DDD would have been a very simple and seemingly obvious improvement in my eyes.

Normally I wouldn't be so nitpicky, its not an outright bad design by a long shot, but when you are literally writing about website design I feel it's okay to expect a little more

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