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The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

deep.design

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Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#41

Post by sandofsky »

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.…

You put the most important menu items in a tab bar. If you really, really need the other junk, hide the long tail of menu items in a "more" tab.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#42

Post by WorldMaker »

One of the things that I felt Windows Phone 7 and 8/8.1 in their design language did well was encouraging designs that were better than the hamburger (pivots and sprawling "hubs" that encourage you to explore in two dimensions; app-bars with ellipses).

It's interesting to see Hamburger menus bleeding back into the design language with Windows 10. It seems a strange, sad concession to meeting Android/iOS designs and even Desktop designs (with their million year old menu bars) "half-way". That said, one of the interesting twists that Windows 10 designs thus far tend to put on the Hamburger menu is that secretly in many cases the Hamburger icon is just a replacement for the Windows Phone 8's App Bar ellipsis:

The items on the bar show just icons at tablet size or lower and the Hamburger simply reveals app labels and maybe (rarely) lesser used text-only options. (At larger than table sizes sometimes the bar defaults expanded rather than condensed.)

This roughly corresponds with the Facebook suggestions in the article here.

The interesting differences to a WP8 app bar are that the W10 hamburger "app bars" have mostly gone vertical and the hamburger is a toggle rather than the WP8 app bar ellipsis was a "slide".

It will be interesting to see how this design language continues to accrete/evolve as Windows 10 Mobile gets closer to launch.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#43

Post by davidw »

georgefrick wrote: post #38
mark242 wrote: post #33

James Archer, author of the piece, is Chief Creative Officer of both Crowd Favorite, and Forty, both of which use -- surprise -- the hamburger menu in their mobile sites. Is this another case of "do what I say, not what I do"?

I think it's the new world case of 'I sold you solution X, now it's time for solution Y'.

I'm waiting for 'flat' design to be passé, myself.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#44

Post by dperfect »

sandofsky wrote: post #41
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.…

You put the most important menu items in a tab bar. If you really, really need the other junk, hide the long tail of menu items in a "more" tab.

I agree that sometimes that works really well. Still, for some apps/websites there is really only one obvious and important function. In those cases, a tab bar would just be putting "the other junk" in a more important place than it should be.

There will always be a conflict in design between minimalism and functionality. The hamburger menu just happens to be prime territory upon which that battle is fought.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#45

Post by eridius »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #20
eridius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's almost always a better way to present it to the user. If I'm viewing a news site, I'm not going to think that the hamburger menu is where I go to find the Lifestyle section. If you absolutely must hide your sections behind a menu, there are practically infinite different menus that make more sense. The hamburger menu only makes sense when it's the literal junk drawer of the app/site, when there's no possi…

> "infinite different menus that make more sense" This a a little hyperbolic. If you want surface a link to the Lifestyle section, then you also have to accept that links to about a dozen other sections need to be visible as well - on mobile, this would lead to about a third of the visible page (or more) being consumed by navigation links. Alternatively, you put the nav at the bottom of the page, but I would argue th…

You seem to have completely missed the entire point of my comment. In no way am I saying that a news site needs to have a link "Lifestyle" visible to the user at all times. In fact, you quoted directly from the most relevant point, the bit that says that there are practically infinite different ways to design a menu that avoids the problem of the hamburger.

As a trivial example, you could have a single menu labelled "Sections" with a disclosure arrow, and mousing over / tapping it would then reveal a list of all sections. It's functionally identical to the hamburger in actual usage, but because it's called "Sections" (and only contains sections, not arbitrary junk), it becomes an obvious thing for users to interact with if they're looking for the Lifestyle section.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#46

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #20
eridius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's almost always a better way to present it to the user. If I'm viewing a news site, I'm not going to think that the hamburger menu is where I go to find the Lifestyle section. If you absolutely must hide your sections behind a menu, there are practically infinite different menus that make more sense. The hamburger menu only makes sense when it's the literal junk drawer of the app/site, when there's no possi…

> "infinite different menus that make more sense" This a a little hyperbolic. If you want surface a link to the Lifestyle section, then you also have to accept that links to about a dozen other sections need to be visible as well - on mobile, this would lead to about a third of the visible page (or more) being consumed by navigation links. Alternatively, you put the nav at the bottom of the page, but I would argue th…

> on mobile...

This is a big part of the problem. Devs too lazy to use media querys to adapt the layout to the screen. We end up with poorly implemented "mobile" sites on our big, wide desktop screens. It's like the web took a step back to 1995 with pages hardcoded for 640px width. Looks good on my iPhone... time to deploy.

A hamburger menu that can be optionally converted to a persistent sidebar on screens with sufficient space would alleviate much of the usability problems.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#47

Post by JoshTriplett »

declan wrote: post #40
JoshTriplett wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you integrate bookmarks and history into "home"? For instance, if home is supposed to be what's recent, history is a natural "less recent".

Thanks for the suggestion! I don't think either of us had thought of that. Inside the app, Home is a starting point that lets you see your news highlights at a glance. It does seem like the concept could be broad enough, as you say, to support history and bookmarks...

The inspiration came from Firefox Mobile, which has a unified home screen that incorporates navigation, recent history, bookmarks, and tabs from other devices, all in the same home screen.

If Home is highlights of the day, then it seems natural to scroll down and see a heading for "Yesterday" with yesterday's highlights, rather than less relevant news from today (which could appear in the other views).

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#48

Post by emodendroket »

The neat thing about UI is that even bad designs eventually become the best ones as people get used to them and recognize them. The hamburger menu appears on a bazillion sites and it's going to be familiar to most users soon if it isn't already.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#49

Post by emodendroket »

eridius wrote: post #16
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…

But there's almost always a better way to present it to the user. If I'm viewing a news site, I'm not going to think that the hamburger menu is where I go to find the Lifestyle section. If you absolutely must hide your sections behind a menu, there are practically infinite different menus that make more sense. The hamburger menu only makes sense when it's the literal junk drawer of the app/site, when there's no possi…

> If I'm viewing a news site, I'm not going to think that the hamburger menu is where I go to find the Lifestyle section.

Well, if there is such a menu, where else would it be?

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#50

Post by grey-area »

mark242 wrote: post #33

James Archer, author of the piece, is Chief Creative Officer of both Crowd Favorite, and Forty, both of which use -- surprise -- the hamburger menu in their mobile sites. Is this another case of "do what I say, not what I do"?

There is a mea culpa in the article about this.
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