I think the main thing is that hamburger menus are stupid on desktop.
It's a symptom of attempting to build hybrid interfaces for both mobile/touch and computer screen/mouse+keyboard by basically ignoring the affordances of the latter altogether. When pixels aren't scarce, [𐄒] is a menu but strictly worse.
Desktop interfaces don't have a pixel shortage. Like at all. Replacing text+icon buttons with cryptic line icons in general means your users have to learn to decode Linear B to use the interface like it's a Myst puzzle.
The design choice is strictly a bad trade-off on desktop. If you're on mobile, where pixels actually are scarce and input precision is low, it makes sense though.
Agreed, but fortunately you rarely see them on desktop, or else it's a hamburger icon that actually toggles a whole sidebar (e.g. Gmail, but I wish they would use a different icon).
I think most designers are developers are aware that hamburger menus are a mobile thing.
Of course sometimes there aren't enough dev resources to do both mobile and desktop and the desktop site is just an embiggened mobile version, with hamburger. But that's resource constraints.
Unfortunately I see them all the time on desktop. Ubuntu/Gnome apps are literally littered with them, because someone thought regular menus are "evil" or something like that. So now most of the apps have a single entry in the regular/global menu (Quit), and all other actions are crammed under the hamburger in the app window.
> When pixels aren't scarce, [𐄒] is a menu but strictly worse.
The character in the square brackets is "AEGEAN NUMBER THIRTY", U+010112. It doesn't display in my browser (Chrome on Windows). Oddly, it does display in my xterm, though that's likely to depend on which fonts you're using. (It's three horizontal lines.)
Exactly this. I kind of understand if you want a design that works the same on mobile and desktop. And very occasionally I think it might make sense, e.g. in browsers.
The real head scratcher is Gnome. Why are they moving from normal menus which work very well to hamburger menus for apps which have plenty of space and are desktop only?
I guess it wouldn't be the first time the Gnome people have made inexplicable UX decisions. Maybe it's just too boring doing the thing that we know works and they want to try new worse things?
"Mobile first design" calls for designing for mobile first, then adopting for desktop second, if there's time anyway.
>Desktop interfaces don't have a pixel shortage.
Combined with designers adding more and more padding, attempting to fit 2 web sites on desktop on a 1080p monitor ends up triggering mobile design anyway.
It's a symptom of attempting to build hybrid interfaces for both mobile/touch and computer screen/mouse+keyboard by basically ignoring the affordances of the latter altogether. When pixels aren't scarce, [𐄒] is a menu but strictly worse.
Desktop interfaces don't have a pixel shortage. Like at all. Replacing text+icon buttons with cryptic line icons in general means your users have to learn to decode Linear B to use the interface like it's a Myst puzzle.
The design choice is strictly a bad trade-off on desktop. If you're on mobile, where pixels actually are scarce and input precision is low, it makes sense though.