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Look at any music app, and you'll see that the pause icon does in fact have meaning absent of a neighboring play button: music apps hide the play button when mu

Look at any music app, and you'll see that the pause icon does in fact have meaning absent of a neighboring play button: music apps hide the play button when music is already playing, and it's still clear how to pause. Many video players on the web show pause controls even in the absence of next/prev buttons, let alone a play button. The context required to parse || as "pause" is just being in a context where pausing is possible. But we've accepted even less context-specific iconography for controls and navigation than even the pause icon; for example, why does × mean "close" when it's in the upper-right corner of a screen? It's fairly arbitrary, but — well, it means close, and it's not confusing. I think the hamburger icon in the upper-left corner of the screen is starting to (or already does) assume the same ubiquity: "main menu."

colept 11y ago
Play/Pause as an on/off toggle is still contextual within the music app. The play button is always going to be in the same place, and the pause button not much farther away. Music apps have also started displaying triangles over the album art. Hamburger menu is an abstraction. Part of the blame here is on operating systems and their branded menu's (think Windows Start or OSX Apple menu). There's no standard to it, which is why native apps are a lot easier to navigate because they conform to what the user expects. That fragmentation grows when you divide by the user's browser, device, etc. It's just not standard and not contextual enough to be a standalone icon.
- reissbaker 11y ago
  why does × mean "close" when it's in the upper-right corner of a screen But even ignoring the counterpoint to the idea that a UI element must be contextual within some category to be understandable, the idea that the hamburger menu isn't a standard OS abstraction is also just silly. Hamburger menus are for mobile devices, and in your points you're comparing them with navigation used on operating systems meant for desktops. On Android — the most-used mobile operating system in the world — the hamburger menu icon is part of the standard toolkit, is built directly into their SDK, and is called out explicitly in their specs for Material Design.

colept 11y ago

Play/Pause as an on/off toggle is still contextual within the music app. The play button is always going to be in the same place, and the pause button not much farther away. Music apps have also started displaying triangles over the album art. Hamburger menu is an abstraction. Part of the blame here is on operating systems and their branded menu's (think Windows Start or OSX Apple menu). There's no standard to it, which is why native apps are a lot easier to navigate because they conform to what the user expects. That fragmentation grows when you divide by the user's browser, device, etc. It's just not standard and not contextual enough to be a standalone icon.

reissbaker 11y ago
why does × mean "close" when it's in the upper-right corner of a screen But even ignoring the counterpoint to the idea that a UI element must be contextual within some category to be understandable, the idea that the hamburger menu isn't a standard OS abstraction is also just silly. Hamburger menus are for mobile devices, and in your points you're comparing them with navigation used on operating systems meant for desktops. On Android — the most-used mobile operating system in the world — the hamburger menu icon is part of the standard toolkit, is built directly into their SDK, and is called out explicitly in their specs for Material Design.