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A PDF isn’t a great UX when viewed on a mobile screen. You’re going to be tapping and pinching and zooming to see different parts of the menu, and probably swit

A PDF isn’t a great UX when viewed on a mobile screen. You’re going to be tapping and pinching and zooming to see different parts of the menu, and probably switching tabs back and forth to actually place the order. There’s plenty of good mobile-friendly menus around. Nice clear typography, easily scroll through items by category, one tap to add to order or to get more details (and often photos) of the dish. It’s just not an art that every restaurant (and restaurant software vendor) seems to have mastered yet, unfortunately.

nojvek 2y ago
pinch and zoom is an excellent navigation mode to quickly scan an overview and zoom into what you care about. I wish more mobile interfaces make good use of that. Instead we have a various versions of drilldowns and poorly implemented search. Half the time I can't even tell what the full list of items are on a mobile menu.
- nofunsir 2y ago
  I agree. It's a difference of O(n^2) or worse for drill-downs, and O(log n) for a pinch and zoom.
JohnFen 2y ago
> There’s plenty of good mobile-friendly menus around. I can honestly say that I've never seen a good mobile-friendly menu anywhere. I'm not saying that they don't exist somewhere, of course, just that I've never seen them.
nofunsir 2y ago
I strongly disagree. Pinching and zooming a locally cached file that contains all the information the user wants is O(n) to perhaps O(log n), while navigating menus is O(n^2). I would settle for a single, zoomable html page.
- _bent 2y ago
  What is n here?
- docmars 2y ago
  Vertical scrolling is a much less tedious interaction than pinching and zooming back and forth to different sections of a 2D plane. On the other hand, the spatial benefits to such a plane helps people remember where to look if they want to return to a section, whereas with endless scrolling, it's nearly impossible to find something you saw before until you happen upon it again scrolling back up for an indeterminate amount of time. This makes me think it would be useful for mobile browsers to allow adding temporary scroll bookmarks while using a page. It'd be useful for browsing lots of items, restaurant menus, on a single page, etc. ("that looks good" [bookmark scroll position] ... [keep scrolling] ... [tap icon to return to the previously saved position])
  - nofunsir 2y ago
    I genuinely think scrolling is more tedious. Have you visited any of apple's product pages lately? Makes me yarf. EDIT: At least restaurant menu sites aren't that bad yet. Can you imagine? "Hamburger. Redefined." <SCROLLS> Hamburger slowly pieces together across the screen tied to your scrolling. "We think you're gonna love it." <SCROLLS> Pickles slowly fade in and out to demonstrate the difference between Hamburger and Hamburger Pro
    - Reason077 2y ago
      Scrolling itself isn't tedious compared to panning and zooming a PDF. The information density is what's important. If you have to do a bunch of scrolling to see just a few items then, yes, they failed.
      - nofunsir 2y ago
        > Scrolling itself isn't tedious compared to panning and zooming a PDF. I simply disagree, and think the EXACT opposite. Panning and Zooming a two-dimensional, immutable file itself isn't tedious compared to scrolling. (You're straw-manning PDFs, though it could be any 2D image or mutable document file)
unclebucknasty 2y ago
Menus should have more intelligence built in. Maybe a prompt or two to get a feel for what a person may want to eat. Or even just listing in order of most popular. This, instead of presenting a bunch of items, or only segmenting by category. In general, the need to navigate the entire menu is reflective of a bigger problem, which is that nobody ever knows what they want to eat for a given meal. If somebody can algorithmically solve this in a personalized way, that would be a quality of life improvement beyond fixing mobile menu formats. Matter of fact, give me an app that spans multiple restaurant menus, understands my preferences over time, and keeps track of what I've recently eaten, then suggests my next meal.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  As a very first step, offer a "must contain/exclude meat" option which would give us an average saving that trends towards 50%. Then identify the most common allergies/preferences and many people could have a typical menu trimmed down enough so that it fits one page on their mobile screen.
  - unclebucknasty 2y ago
    That's the thinking. I don't eat red meat or pork, so, for the average restaurant, my option set generally trends towards 20% to 25%. But, I generally have to browse the burger section to ensure they didn't bury a turkey burger in it.
- ttepasse 2y ago
  I like menus for finding stuff I have not eaten and could be curious about. Taking my past preferences into consideration would be an antifeature.
  - unclebucknasty 2y ago
    Yeah, I like to experiment too sometimes, and the option to browse could still be available. It's pretty easy to pull off and is the standard now. But even with that, your experimentation could be guided. And, man, most times I find myself just needing to eat something versus embarking on some great culinary quest. So, more often than not, it's just one more thing to solve.

nojvek 2y ago

pinch and zoom is an excellent navigation mode to quickly scan an overview and zoom into what you care about. I wish more mobile interfaces make good use of that. Instead we have a various versions of drilldowns and poorly implemented search. Half the time I can't even tell what the full list of items are on a mobile menu.

nofunsir 2y ago
I agree. It's a difference of O(n^2) or worse for drill-downs, and O(log n) for a pinch and zoom.

JohnFen 2y ago

> There’s plenty of good mobile-friendly menus around. I can honestly say that I've never seen a good mobile-friendly menu anywhere. I'm not saying that they don't exist somewhere, of course, just that I've never seen them.

nofunsir 2y ago

I strongly disagree. Pinching and zooming a locally cached file that contains all the information the user wants is O(n) to perhaps O(log n), while navigating menus is O(n^2). I would settle for a single, zoomable html page.

_bent 2y ago
What is n here?
docmars 2y ago
Vertical scrolling is a much less tedious interaction than pinching and zooming back and forth to different sections of a 2D plane. On the other hand, the spatial benefits to such a plane helps people remember where to look if they want to return to a section, whereas with endless scrolling, it's nearly impossible to find something you saw before until you happen upon it again scrolling back up for an indeterminate amount of time. This makes me think it would be useful for mobile browsers to allow adding temporary scroll bookmarks while using a page. It'd be useful for browsing lots of items, restaurant menus, on a single page, etc. ("that looks good" [bookmark scroll position] ... [keep scrolling] ... [tap icon to return to the previously saved position])
- nofunsir 2y ago
  I genuinely think scrolling is more tedious. Have you visited any of apple's product pages lately? Makes me yarf. EDIT: At least restaurant menu sites aren't that bad yet. Can you imagine? "Hamburger. Redefined." <SCROLLS> Hamburger slowly pieces together across the screen tied to your scrolling. "We think you're gonna love it." <SCROLLS> Pickles slowly fade in and out to demonstrate the difference between Hamburger and Hamburger Pro
  - Reason077 2y ago
    Scrolling itself isn't tedious compared to panning and zooming a PDF. The information density is what's important. If you have to do a bunch of scrolling to see just a few items then, yes, they failed.
    - nofunsir 2y ago
      > Scrolling itself isn't tedious compared to panning and zooming a PDF. I simply disagree, and think the EXACT opposite. Panning and Zooming a two-dimensional, immutable file itself isn't tedious compared to scrolling. (You're straw-manning PDFs, though it could be any 2D image or mutable document file)

unclebucknasty 2y ago

Menus should have more intelligence built in. Maybe a prompt or two to get a feel for what a person may want to eat. Or even just listing in order of most popular. This, instead of presenting a bunch of items, or only segmenting by category. In general, the need to navigate the entire menu is reflective of a bigger problem, which is that nobody ever knows what they want to eat for a given meal. If somebody can algorithmically solve this in a personalized way, that would be a quality of life improvement beyond fixing mobile menu formats. Matter of fact, give me an app that spans multiple restaurant menus, understands my preferences over time, and keeps track of what I've recently eaten, then suggests my next meal.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
As a very first step, offer a "must contain/exclude meat" option which would give us an average saving that trends towards 50%. Then identify the most common allergies/preferences and many people could have a typical menu trimmed down enough so that it fits one page on their mobile screen.
- unclebucknasty 2y ago
  That's the thinking. I don't eat red meat or pork, so, for the average restaurant, my option set generally trends towards 20% to 25%. But, I generally have to browse the burger section to ensure they didn't bury a turkey burger in it.
ttepasse 2y ago
I like menus for finding stuff I have not eaten and could be curious about. Taking my past preferences into consideration would be an antifeature.
- unclebucknasty 2y ago
  Yeah, I like to experiment too sometimes, and the option to browse could still be available. It's pretty easy to pull off and is the standard now. But even with that, your experimentation could be guided. And, man, most times I find myself just needing to eat something versus embarking on some great culinary quest. So, more often than not, it's just one more thing to solve.