What Is a Hamburger Menu Button?
Apr 17, 2021, 6:40 am EDT
| 3 min read
Hamburger Menu or Hamburger Icon is a term commonly used when talking about apps. It might make you hungry, but it has nothing to do with food. Where did this silly name come from, and what does the menu do?
The History of the Hamburger Icon
The Hamburger icon menu, symbol, button, etc. has been around since 1981. It was created by Norm Cox, the graphics lead for the Xerox Star, the first commercial personal computer.
Norm designed the symbol as a container for menu choices. The horizontal lines are an abstract depiction of a vertical list. You can see the hamburger menu buttons in action on the Xerox Star in the video below at the 21:15 mark.
Latest update on
Monday 18 January 2021 à 09:17 by Natalia Kudryavtseva. In the Internet Archaeology rubric, we talk about some very familiar standards of the Internet that we often don t even notice. This time we would like to draw your attention to the menu icon. Have you ever paid attention to it? Funny fact, but in almost all interfaces it looks like a hamburger. In this article, you will find out
why it has this image, does it have something to do with the air vent or with an actual hamburger and what are the origins of the menu icon.
Why Does the Menu Icon Look Like a Hamburger?