• A fun fact inspired by Trainwreck Labs players

• Answers to last week's games

• Game updates

TIL: Web designers use Hamburger menus, Meatball menus, and Döner menus, but not Donner menus

In the 1970s and 1980s, employees at Xerox PARC developed the first ever graphical user interface, or GUI. Before the GUI, users interacted with computers using the command line, like software engineers and movie hackers still do today. Because of Xerox, users could for the first time navigate a representation of the operating system using the computer mouse 🐁

Along with the mouse came desktop icons, and when there were too many icons to fit on the primitive monitor, the collapsible menu. To figure out what the menu should look like, a designer named Norman Cox and his team experimented with arrows and lines of different length before settling on the iconic (pun intended) 3 bar Hamburger menu. According to Cox, “There was never a question as to how many lines, since 2 lines looked like an ‘equal’ sign, and 4 lines were visually too many. Three lines were the perfect number.”

In the years since, as user interfaces have gotten more complex, the Hamburger menu was joined by other food-based designs such as the Kebab and Meatballs menus. The new addition most similar to the Hamburger menu is the Döner menu, whose name is inspired by the Turkish döner sandwich. The funnel shape of the Döner menu makes it perfect for lists that include different options for filtering, like you might see in Microsoft Excel.

But, as one member of the Trainwreck Labs Discord server pointed out this week, the Döner menu should never be confused with the Donner menu. If you can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the Donner party had had a delicious menu of döners instead of, well, each other, check out the image above created by DALL-E.

Connor Brooke. (2015-03-09). The Story Behind the Infamous Hamburger Icon. Business 2 Community. Retrieved 2023-11-26, from https://www.business2community.com/brandviews/activemobi/story-behind-infamous-hamburger-icon-01176772 

Answers to last week's games

Monday, November 20 to Sunday, November 26.

Forgeous

Play Forgeous for Nov 27.

Franciabigio. (1509). Head of the Madonna. [Oil paint on panel]. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2023-11-27, from https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437608](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437608

Game Updates

Fictogram is live! Thank you to everyone that volunteered to be a beta tester last week. There game has already featured a fun mix of familiar and famous fictional figures. I’m thrilled to see how much players have been enjoying it so far and I’m proud to add it to the Trainwreck Labs portfolio.

As well, some new animals and plants were added to the Meta games this week, including some tough, unique species like tardigrades and sea sponges. Here’s a tip: If you find that none of your guesses are getting you closer to the answer, use a hint! Exchanging 3 guesses to reveal a rank may seem like a steep cost, but in some situations, it’s almost certainly worth it.

Finally, the long awaited Discord login for Globle is finally available, but unfortunately a bug affecting players’ stats crept in as well. If your current streak seems much higher than it should be, respond to this email and let me know!

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