1MB Club

Using Hamburger Menus? Try Sausage Links

When designing medium to large sized menu navigations on the mobile web the default go-to, for some time now, has been hamburger menus. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there is a simpler alternative for certain use cases.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details (and a simple demo) of the sausage link concept, let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of hamburger menus.

Hamburger Menus

The concept of the hamburger menu isn’t horrible by any means, in fact it does solve a lot of problems from a visual perspective. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it exists without some annoying flaws.

The Good

The Bad

As you can see, the bad points listed above aren’t that bad. I see them more as minor potholes along the UX journey for your end-users. A good portion of hamburger menu examples in the wild work perfectly fine and should remain as they are. However, those outliers who abuse or misuse the hamburger concept should be introduced to sausage links.

I should start by mentioning that this concept is far from new. There are a good number of websites that already implement this menu type in some form or another. The point of this post isn’t to blow your mind with some new-never-thought-of navigation design. I’m just trying to bring awareness to another available menu concept.

Enough chit-chat, let’s take a look at sausage links in action:

See the Pen Scrolling Navigation (Sausage Links) by Bradley Taunt (@bradleytaunt) on CodePen.

The above CodePen adds a good amount of visual design fluff, so let’s take a look at the bare minimum HTML & CSS needed to accomplish this menu:

<nav class="sausage-links">
    <ul>
        <li><a href="">Homepage</a></li>
        <li><a href="">Categories</a></li>
        <li><a href="">Filter Properties</a></li>
        <li><a href="">Edit Optional Tags</a></li>
        <li><a href="">Research Papers</a></li>
        <li><a href="">Contact Our Team</a></li>
    </ul>
</nav>

/* Sausage Links Nav Container */
.sausage-links {
    position: relative;
}

/* The left and right "faded" pseudo elements */
.sausage-links:before, .sausage-links:after {
    content: '';
    height: calc(100% - 2em);
    pointer-events: none;
    position: absolute;
    top: 1em;
    width: 10px;
    z-index: 2;
}
.sausage-links:before {
    background: linear-gradient(to right, rgba(255,255,255,0) 0%, white 100%);
    right: 0;
}
.sausage-links:after {
    background: linear-gradient(to left, rgba(255,255,255,0) 0%, white 100%);
    left: 0;
}

/* Basic flexbox to prevent items from breaking lines */
.sausage-links ul {
    display: flex;
    flex-wrap: nowrap;
    overflow: auto;
    -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;
}

.sausage-links ul li {
    white-space: nowrap;
}

.sausage-links ul li a, .sausage-links ul li a:visited {
    display: inline-block;
}

Pretty simple, eh?

Update: Thanks to @dany0w for pointing out that I forgot to include -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch for momentum scrolling on iOS.

The Good

The Bad

That really depends on your project or overall mobile design (I know, such a helpful answer). I’m sure there are even a few use cases where it would make sense to have sausage links within a toggle-based hamburger menu. The menu possibilities could be endless!

That’s it. I hope I’ve inspired you to try out sausage links in the near future or at least made you think more deeply about mobile navigation design!

…is anyone else really hungry now?

Special Thanks

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