{"id":23891,"date":"2019-01-08T14:31:20","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T19:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=23891"},"modified":"2019-01-11T17:45:18","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T22:45:18","slug":"the-ios-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/08\/the-ios-menu\/","title":{"rendered":"The iOS Menu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon<\/a> (tweet<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

I realised six months ago as I was using my Mac, using the menus, that I need<\/em> these things — menus — in Codea. I was trying to solve a problem that has been solved for decades.<\/p>\n

So I set out to make the best menus I could make for iOS.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Compared to all the options I considered, menus are exactly that, discoverable<\/em>. You pull down a list of named features<\/em> complete with shortcut keys (if a keyboard is attached). Then you activate that feature by tapping on it, or by dragging your finger and releasing.<\/p>\n

Hamburger menus, side-drawers, whatever you want to call them, are a conventional way to bury additional and often unrelated functionality into an app. But they are much heavier than the good old-fashioned menu bar. They often pull out a whole modal side-thingy, maybe they slide all your content to the right. It’s a context switch for your brain.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

iOS really needs something like this. I get that Apple didn’t want to bring over everything from the Mac’s design. But, as with some other features, I feel like they’ve had their chance to show us a better way and haven’t delivered. So they may as well reinvent the wheel.<\/p>\n\n

Previously: Proof That iOS Still Hasn’t Gotten Undo Right<\/a>, Make the iPad More Like the Mac<\/a>, Great Alternatives to Hamburger Menus<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2019-01-11): Simon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In this post I’m going to walk you through all the other details that make this work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

What they’re doing here with Codea isn’t just putting the Mac menu bar on iOS. They’ve designed and built a very iOS-looking take<\/em> on a menu bar, deeply informed by the aspects of the Mac menu bar that do work on a touch screen. Something like this is desperately needed as a standard interface element on iPad, and I think could work on iPhone too.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Riccardo Mori<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Speaking of iOS apps with menus, the first instance I remember seeing was TaskPaper on iOS 6. I still use this app, by the way.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon (tweet, Hacker News): I realised six months ago as I was using my Mac, using the menus, that I need these things — menus — in Codea. I was trying to solve a problem that has been solved for decades. So I set out to make the best menus I could make for iOS. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-01-08T19:31:22Z","apple_news_api_id":"871433e8-acb9-4e2e-9e78-2b458ea22a30","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2019-01-11T22:45:23Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AhxQz6Ky5Ti6eeCtFjqIqMA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[77,31,1610,145],"class_list":["post-23891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-design","tag-ios","tag-ios-12","tag-ipad"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23891"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23917,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23891\/revisions\/23917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}