Hamburgers, Meatballs, and Kebabs

I find myself hungrier than usual writing this ITmail but in the computer world, hamburgers, meatballs, and kebabs are menus, not menu items.

Hamburger menus (three horizontal, parallel lines), Meatball menus (three horizontal dots, officially an “Ellipsis"), and Kebab menus (three vertical dots) are clickable screen icons that reveal “More Options." These menus, sometimes called “Overflow Menus," are usually found in the upper corners of your desktop and mobile screens. They are meant to keep your valuable screen space uncluttered.

While similar in function, these menus differ in content. Hamburger menus, frequently used in mobile apps, reveal other sections of the app to which you can navigate: “About Us,” "Products and Services,” “Portfolio,” "Contact Us,” etc. These sections might be the same options you see on the main navigation bar of a site's roomier desktop version. Meatball and Kebab menus usually reveal options related to the page you are on: “Settings,” “Print,” Screen Magnification,” “Find,” “Help,” etc.

The smaller the screen, the more software developers depend on hidden menus; there just isn’t enough room for every option to be visible. If you don’t see what you are looking for on your screen, chances are it’s hiding behind one of these menus.

There are other clever food-themed menu icons as you can see from the graphic above from ux.stackexchange.com — and I admit I haven't seen many of them in use — but i’ll quit having just described the few most popular ones. Although I do feel like I’m on a roll….