I've never understood the hate for the "Hamburger button". It's here, it works fine and doesn't hurt anyone.<p>Some options just don't need to be in the face of the user 100% of the time. Why do I need a "setting/more" button at the bottom of the screen all the time?<p>I can understand, it's often overused. Some applications would be better by using "tabs", some would be better by just placing the most-used buttons somewhere in the screen when you can always watch them. But why not doing both? Put your most-used features in an easy and discoverable position, hide stuff that the normal user don't need often in the hamburger button (A good example for that is the Play Store, the slide menu has a link to settings, an about, and the user picker to switch user).<p>Also, the proposed solution is to have an auto-hiding tab bar. Please, please, think twice before implementing this. It's really annoying to have something popping up and disappearing when I'm interacting with your applications, and not with your menu.<p>The Hamburger button has the advantage of staying to his place until the user decide to interact with it. This kind of tab bar instead is almost random. The user has to scroll up/down to show/hide it, which one already do when interacting with the applications. Also every applications seems to do it slightly different, so pulling up half of the screen might be enough in one, but not enough to show it in a different one.<p>So, the hamburger button might be horrible, but the tab bar is worse, at least in my opinion. The user interact with it more just because it's getting more annoyed by it.<p>As an additional note, see the recent Google+ for Android redesign, which removed the hamburger button. Now it has two bar at the top of the screen which disappear/appear while scrolling, occupying almost 1/5 of the whole screen. Plus a "+" button hovering the content all the time. The general consensus (at least, the one I've heard) is that it's a terrible upgrade.
It's funny to see these trends in UI, starting in the early 90s it seems they gained more and more toolbars and features and navigation elements while reducing content area, then in the middle of the last decade they started getting hidden more and more behind menus and layers of menus (it continues today) to increase content area, and now we're at a point where opposition to this movement is becoming more apparent.<p>For me, the biggest issue I see with the example hamburger buttons there is that <i>they don't look like buttons</i> --- they look more like an air vent/grille, a stylistic thing rather than "touch here to get more".
I agree with losing the hamburger buttons, but the Facebook example is terrible:<p><a href="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/facebook-ios-7.png" rel="nofollow">http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/facebook...</a><p><pre><code> Left: Facebook’s old hamburger button navigation. Right: The new tab bar style
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Looks to me like they just moved the same set of buttons from the top to the bottom, adding a "More" button.. which is a hamburger button!
I apologize in advance for potentially thread-jacking, but this story reminds me of an issue on which I'd really like to get other HN readers advice:<p>I'm seeing more and more stories online including animated GIFs by default like this one does.<p>Even when they add value to the story, I find the constant motion distracting at best, and seizure-inducing at worst.<p>Does anyone have recommendations re: the best way to block animated GIFs from auto-playing in Chrome?<p>Quick initial searching turned up this Stack Exchange thread <a href="http://superuser.com/questions/23655/how-to-stop-animated-gifs-in-google-chrome" rel="nofollow">http://superuser.com/questions/23655/how-to-stop-animated-gi...</a> but the user script listed no longer seems to be available, and there is a debate in the thread re the usability of the other extension options listed.
The worst part about Firefox 29 was the hamburger button. I couldn't believe it when I saw it.<p><pre><code> Aw fuck! Et tu, Firefox?
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...was all I could think. As I explored further, my worst fears came true: they had destroyed Firefox's extremely versatile and fully customizable toolbar, and re-architected it as a woefully inadequate and fully customizable hamburger.<p><pre><code> </first-world-problems>
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P.S. The fact that a floating unicorn appears, when you elect to have an empty hamburger, is little consolation.
(Sorry about the cynical comment)<p>Hamburger button or no hamburger button, this article is a pretty decent example of one that should be taken with a large grain of salt<p>Hyperbolic, thoughtless, and over-generalized advice, not based on any user stories/scenarios.<p>You really need to dig a little deeper before generalizing like this.
Actually, the original article the tc-story summarizes is at <a href="http://lmjabreu.com/post/why-and-how-to-avoid-hamburger-menus/" rel="nofollow">http://lmjabreu.com/post/why-and-how-to-avoid-hamburger-menu...</a> .<p>And while I'm not a big fan of hamburgers as well, proposing a scrollable tab bar as an alternative is.. a bit strange.
I wish developers would put words next to their icons more often. Too many glyphs feel cryptic to me until I just try them at random to see what they do. A big example is the copy icon on Android that pops up. The word "copy" could've fit well there, and as a "high-level" experienced computer user I didn't know that the two papers side by side meant "copy". I actually thought it was "paste" at first. The hamburger buttons with a "more" or something on them probably fared better.
I hate the Hamburger Button, but every single iOS and Android app uses it, so it's not like it's undiscoverable. Consistency wins over absolute excellence, I think, and this is consistent. Unfortunately.
A great example of how people think they can do better than Apple's Human Interface Guidelines only to backtrack later. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel!
Recently implemented snap.js on a site with the ability to drag the menu from the left as well as press the 'hamburger' button. On iOS I found that dragging from the edge of the screen leads to a hit and miss situation where the user may sometimes open the nav drawer but may also sometimes go 'back' to the previous page. How are people 'doing' navigation right now? I always liked the sliding navs on mobile sites, but where should I have the drag box. The bottom of the screen?
Good UX discussion over at Stack Exchange about this a month or so ago.<p><a href="http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/55807/is-the-hamburger-icon-a-recognized-navigation-symbol" rel="nofollow">http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/55807/is-the-hamburger...</a><p>The only problem I see is that we are getting closer each day to mainstream adoption and just when this is starting to happen it is getting yanked back by UX studies.
One big problem on iOS is that Apple use the hamburger icon to suggest 'History'. iTunes and I think the podcast app at least use it in this context.<p>Not sure if they do this to try and push against the use of it by hijacking the meaning but still adds to the confusion none the less.
Facebook seems to have been a poor example. The only item pulled out from the hamburger pane is the search bar. Which, while nice and all, is not as dramatic of a change as the article seems to make it out to be.
Personally, I really love swiping from the edge of the screen to open the hamburger menu. It's one of my favorite recent UI trends on iOS, and it's never lead to any confusion for me.
I think a mix of a tab bar and a hamburger menu is a good solution. Put the most frequently used items on the tab bar and then have a hamburger menu for everything else.