On today’s menu are CSS hamburgers. A responsive way to display an off-canvas menu using only HTML and CSS.
A CSS hamburger menu is a great way to improve navigation without cluttering a screen. Think of it as the epitome of responsive design but with endless possibilities.
Keep reading to discover hamburger menu examples you can create using CSS, including slide-outs, screen overlays, and cool animations. Let’s get started!
What Is A Hamburger Menu?
A hamburger menu is a button consisting of three line symbols. When pressed, it displays a hidden menu or settings and an “X” icon indicating that it can be collapsed. It is often placed at the top corner of a website or user interface. This menu adapts a minimalistic approach to present secondary navigation options.
They are also used when you have too many buttons and links on your header navigation bar. A responsive hamburger menu allows you to shrink all this into a more scalable menu design, creating a compact menu. Ideal for sticky navbars and one-page websites.
As you might have guessed, it is called a hamburger menu because the icon looks like a stacked burger 😋
Hamburger Menu Pros
Here are some advantages of using a Hamburger Menu for your website:
- Reduces Visual Clutter. It condenses your website’s navigation options. This frees up space and keeps your interface clean, thus preventing your site from overwhelming its users with too many options.
- Improves Website Appearance. Displaying multiple options simultaneously on one screen is impractical and ruins your website’s appearance. With the Hamburger Menu, you can organize and present these options in a manageable way.
- Keeps Visitors’ Focus on Content. Fewer options mean fewer distractions for website visitors. This allows them to focus on the content of the page, which can improve engagement.
- Familiarity. Since people are already familiar with the hamburger menu, they will know what it means once they see it on your website. This will prevent them from getting lost and confused as they navigate your site’s menus.
Hamburger Menu Cons
Despite having numerous pros, there are some disadvantages of choosing this menu for your site, which include:
- Reduced Discoverability. Less tech-savvy individuals may be unfamiliar with the Hamburger Menu, preventing them from immediately seeing your website’s menus.
- Hidden Options. This feature hides your website’s menu, so users might not realize the full range of options they can access.
- Extra Interaction Requirement. Users need to click on the Hamburger Menu icon to reveal your website’s actual menus. This adds an extra step to their navigation process, resulting in a slightly slower user experience.
Hamburger Menu: Is it Always the “Tastiest” Option?
No, the hamburger menu isn’t always the best option, and it could need some improvements. If the features added to the menu aren’t important to your users, then you don’t need it. But if you’re looking for increased functionality, then yes, it’s a great alternative.
Sites with numerous animations don’t require the Hamburger Menu. Also, there is no point in including it if all the important features will be hidden. However, let’s consider real estate or gaming websites and apps.
In such cases, this additional navigation helps to prevent visitors from being overwhelmed with numerous options and information. Imagine visiting the Minecraft website on your phone without the hidden menu. This means everything from games to shop, community, support, and accounts is displayed simultaneously, which is chaotic.
Hamburger Menu Examples to “Take-Away”
Now that we understand what a CSS hamburger menu is and its main purpose, let’s go through some examples, and you can use yourself and get inspiration from them.
If you are looking to create a responsive design, mobile or just to fit more content in your navigation elements, a CSS responsive hamburger menu is one of the best solutions to go with.
1 Responsive CSS Hamburger Menu – CSS only
It’s quite common to have burger menus to replace standard horizontal menus on small viewports. This way, the menu becomes completely responsive and provides the best experience depending on the viewport size.
If that’s what you are looking for, this example will do exactly that, and with only CSS. To test it out, open the codepen in a new window and resize the result panel.
In responsive mode, the hamburger menu will open the list of items one after the other in a vertical column coming from the top. Quite a standard behavior for mobile devices.
2. Simple Centred Hamburger Menu
This one is very simple but effective; it only uses HTML and CSS to pull off a hamburger menu with some cool animations.
The hamburger icon itself, when clicked, transforms into a cross and works as the close button. The menu slides into view and displays in the centre with its navigation links.
If you like sliding menu designs and cool animations with many options, you may be interested in fullPage.js – A library that allows you to build full-width, full-screen web pages that are scrollable. It is even available for WordPress with Elementor and Gutenberg plugins and a WordPress theme.
3. Left Sliding Responsive Hamburger Menu
If you are looking for a more complete example of how a CSS hamburger menu can be useful, this CodePen renders an example website to showcase the use of the CSS hamburger menu.
It only uses pure HTML and CSS, so it is easy to learn from and understand what is happening. The menu icon is animated and transforms into a cross when the menu is open.
The menu itself slides out from the slide and overlays the main website. As this design is responsive, it will automatically hide the header menu and make the burger menu available once the screen width decreases.
If you are also interested in menus and not only on the hamburger elemenet, check out these examples of great side menus for your webpage!
4. Full-screen Hamburger Menu
Considering opening the menu element in full-screen? Then you’ll love this example. A CSS-only solution to display a burger menu and open it on a full-screen layer.
This kind of full-screen menu can come in handy when our menu has many items, sub-menus, or extra information.
5. Hamburger menu animations
If you are looking for different animations for your hamburger menu icon, you have to take a look at these ones.
It uses a single line of JavaScript (or jQuery) to set the state of the burger. The rest is all pure CSS.
6. Snappy Sliding Hamburger Menu
A very snappy and slick CSS hamburger menu that only uses HTML and CSS to pull this off.
The menu itself quickly slides out from the left and does not take up the whole screen, just the left side. The menu items have a nice hover effect as well. And if this effect is not fancy enough for you, you can create a better hover effect by getting inspiration from these CSS Button hover effects.
Good to work from if you are looking to add this to an existing website or you only want the basic structure.
7. Top Left Animated Hamburger Menu
Most CSS hamburger menus either slide out from the left and right or take up the whole screen. But this one is a bit different because it only uses the top left corner inside a bubble-shaped menu.
Very unique compared to the traditional hamburger menu design, this example could easily be changed to edit the colours or add an effective shadow on the background.
This one does use JavaScript, but it is only very minimal: basically just to toggle the CSS classes to change the menu status, open or closed. Nothing complicated. No libraries or dependencies to rely on, just pure JavaScript that is very basic.
8. Simple Left-Sliding Hamburger Menu Overlay
The animation is smooth and doesn’t feel tacky. The menu slides out from the left and sits on top of any main content behind it.
Doesn’t require any JavaScript, just works purely based on HTML and CSS, easy to work from or adapt to your liking.
The menu itself will be easy to edit and add your own content, simply write your own HTML elements inside, and the menu will slide out.
The hamburger menu icon also has a smooth open and close animation that only uses CSS.
9. Animated Full Screen Hamburger Menu
Featuring a floating CSS hamburger menu icon inside a circular background, once clicked, the menu uses a curricular opening animation.
The animation is very smooth and opens from the point of the menu icon itself.
Taking up the full screen would be great for busy navigation menus that require a lot of space with images, icons, and text.
Only uses pure HTML and CSS to pull this off.
10. Full Screen Morphing Hamburger Menu
A fun animated CSS hamburger menu that morphs outwards from the top right corner of the screen into a full-screen menu.
Only using HTML and CSS, the structure is simple to follow and make edits to add your own content and navigation links/style.
11. Multi-Depth Hamburger Menu
Sliding out from the left side of the screen, this menu design is more suited for complex navigation.
It has a lovely sliding animation, but the menu itself uses a very well-structured item list that can go multiple depths, which is useful for inner categories.
It uses HTML and CSS, which are generated from SCSS.
Alternatives to a Hamburger Menu
If you don’t like the cons of a hamburger menu, here are some alternatives:
- Tabbed Menus. Display all features and functionalities on the screen. A good example is the Instagram app, which allows you to switch from one page to another with a single click.
- Labeled Menu Button. Instead of the Hamburger button, simply put a “Menu” label, which is hard to miss.
- Floating Menu. It is placed in a fixed position on the screen, and users can access it from any page.
- Tab Bar With More Options. This is where primary navigation options are displayed on the screen. Users can click “More” or “Options” to unlock hidden features.
- Swiping Feature. This option allows users to swipe to access different features. It is mainly used in dating and social media sites. For instance, swiping left on TikTok displays the person’s profile. However, this works best when accompanied by screen icons.
- Collapsing Menu. As the name suggests, the menu opens and collapses progressively. This technique is common in media websites and blogs.
Takeaway
We’ve seen a lot of different designs for CSS hamburger menus, some traditional, some a little different. Hopefully, you have found something you like from our examples and found inspiration to use one on your next website.
Find the perfect combination for your hamburger menu by using one of these amazing JavaScript menus.
The CSS hamburger menu has a wide range of uses: from responsive design, interactive experiences with floating menu icons, and providing you with more space with an off-canvas menu.
Overall, CSS responsive hamburger menus are a great way to make your website layout responsive and scale down to smaller screens on mobile devices. It is an easy way to make your header navigation section responsive and adaptable to different screen sizes.
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