[detritus]

I know it was originally invented way back when (in Xerox Parc?), but it did not become 'de facto' on small screens decades ago, that's just a mangling of perspective.

I don't recollect ever having seen it on any of the 'small screens' (ie LCDs, etc) I used prior to smartphones.

[mixmastamyk]

PDAs and the Nokia phone, mp3 player generation had icons. 90s-2010s

[anthk]

PDA's where niche. No one used hamburger buttons prior to 2007-2010. No. One. Period.

[mixmastamyk]

The wikipedia article linked elsewhere disproves that.

However I misread the thread in my previous post.

[anthk]

Our actual experience say otherwise instead of your review of 90's history on Wikipedia and alikes.

PDA's where a CEO/mid-boss/rich guy tools and nothing more, ditto with cell phones until late 90's.

The 99% of the people using software was doing that thru PC's and with a mouse and menu based WIMP interfaces, and not a smartphone based UI.

[enyo]

I never said that it did.

[detritus]

Except in the bit I quoted above, no.

Wait, what?

This might seem like I'm simply being contrarian or wanting stamp my rightitude on the matter, but your framing of the icon's absolute comprehension by everyone else seems to me to be ... ill-advised. Someone not doing their homework might just take your schpiel at face value and propagate problems obliviously.

I've 'beta'd' hamburger icons a few times over the years and have always come away not relying on them precisely because they don't seem to have the blanket comprehension amongst users you seem to think they do.

[enyo]

> "but it did not become 'de facto' on small screens decades ago”

To me saying that something becomes something over a few decades doesn’t imply that it has been that way from the beginning. It has become a de facto standard over two decades doesn’t mean that it was a de facto standard two decades ago.

I feel like this is really not important, and I’ll change it to the last decade because it doesn’t matter. It’s definitely true that the adoption was most relevant in the last decade. I remember building hamburger menus over 20 years ago though.

What is more important is your second point that I sort of endorse hamburger buttons as a good UI element choice with this introduction. To me, this introduction was not meant to be controversial in any way. I believe that hamburger buttons are one of the most recognisable UI elements, and I don’t think that companies like Apple would use them without doing their homework.

That being said, it was not my intent to promote them as such. I didn’t do any profound research on the topic, and this article is not meant for user interface designers, but for developers that want or need to implement such a button because it either fits their use case or because the designers made the decision.

I’ll amend the intro to be more careful in the wording.

You came in a bit hot with your initial comment, but thanks for your feedback :)