Some say it is harder to reach because it is usually located at the top left or right corners of the screen and the mobile phones are growing in size with every year. This further leads to less user engagement, i.e. When you put items in a hamburger menu, they are less visible and therefore less prominent. The main reason is that it is not transparent enough. This three line icon is getting a lot of hate lately and it is clear why. More advanced stuff like diets, progression, and recipes are put aside and readily available at the touch of a button. My Fitness PalĪ calorie tracking app had to include a hamburger menu right? They added it to the top left of the screen, out of the way of the calorie counter.

The hamburger menu is there for other options, such as backup, sharing, and settings. Google does the same thing the primary focus of Google Drive is on documents and other files. The hamburger icon is for secondary use, less important than finding a ride, e.g. Uber has done a great job with the hamburger icon because their app revolves entirely around booking rides. Here are some better examples of hamburger icon use. Maybe these big shots were not using the icon properly, or it simply did not fit their platforms. YouTube also made this decision after experiencing a drop in user engagement. However, due to a lack of transparency, Facebook decided to replace the hamburger icon with a tab bar. Hamburger icon was popularized by the biggest apps, like Google, YouTube, and Facebook. Some would rather consider it a “More” icon than “Options” and this proved to be a better approach.

This icon breaks the large walls of text and makes the user focused on the main interface of a site or an app. That would be very difficult for languages like Dutch or German, which are notorious for long words. On another note, not everyone is an English native so they would have to translate the option and fit it on small smartphone screens. So instead of writing Menu, Preferences or Options, they decided to use the hamburger icon. Developers can’t possibly spell out everything because of the lack of space. Some users find it difficult to navigate in some apps or websites and there is definitely a reason for it. The hamburger icon was an attractive choice because they could store many options behind the small three lines. Smartphone screens were not that big at first, so app designers had to find a way to make the most of the space they had. How come it reemerged only recently? Well, it was due to the popularization of mobile phones. It was the first ever graphical user interface, made to give users an easy access to a selection of choices. The icon with three horizontal lines has a similar appearance, and that is how it is popularly referred to nowadays.Īs for the invention of this icon, the credit goes to Norm Cox who created it for Xerox Star. Anyhow it is a sandwich with meat between two buns, invented over 100 years ago. There is a lot of dispute over the invention of the hamburger. Read on if you are interested in the origins of the hamburger icon, what apps use it and the controversy revolving around it. Website and app developers found it difficult to fit every option on the main screen, and this tiny delicious icon made all of that possible. It was invented a long time ago, but it stayed dormant until the smartphone era. This hamburger menu does not couple with fries and soda it is actually used to save space. Did you know this icon is actually called the hamburger menu? However, you are probably in the dark when it comes to its name, just like most of the people. You have probably seen the icon with three horizontal lines a million times, browsing the Internet or using a mobile app. What Is the Icon with Three Lines Called?

3 lines geometry dash icon