The Everything Menu

Everyone knows the “hamburger menu” button. It looks like this, and when you click on it, you more or less know what you’ll find inside. But in this post, I’ll show that there are some things it cannot contain. And for that reason, I believe we need an “everything menu.”

Here’s how I came to this conclusion:

I recently made this website. I only use two buttons: a spinning “home” button and on some pages, a “share” button

A few months later, I added some links and figured I needed a navigational menu. So I turned my share button into a hamburger button.

It felt wrong.

When you click a hamburger menu, you expect navigation links. I wanted to show BOTH navigation AND contextual links.

And that’s when I realized… I needed an everything menu.

This used to be called a Navicon

If you don’t know, the “hamburger menu” became popular around 2010 when everyone got smartphones. Originally designed in 1981 by Norm Cox for Xerox, it was called a “navicon” or “navbars.”

Designers have always had mixed feelings about this button. It jams important navigational information into a small hidden space.

it’s a menu icon
it has three lines
and it’s… alright

… It’s a closet.

And like a closet, you have no idea what’s inside until you open it. So for users, its basically like opening a whole new page when you click it.

Also if you’re looking for something specific, you don’t know to click it. Even in 2025, some designers write “Menu” next to the navicon for this reason.

It’s bad UI.

And so me… knowing its bad, thinks:

What if we shoved even more stuff inside of it?

But doesn’t the navicon already DO everything?

No. It does a lot, but there are several links you can’t really put inside. That’s because when you click it, you expect navigation, and only navigation:

• You don’t expect to see “download” or “share” in
• You don’t expect to see a “buy” button
• You don’t expect to see an option to “save” or “bookmark”

These 👆 are contextual expectations, not navigational.

And so I’m thinking: what if a single button could contain ALL of these contextual intentions AND navigational items all at once?

A true everything menu.

An everything bagel menu?

An everything all at once menu?

But wait, maybe there’s already something that does it:

	Kabob menu	This almost works, but it’s only contextual, not navigational
	Meatball menu	Same as above, but also means “more” — so it could work
	Hamburger menu	While great for primary navigation, doesn’t do contextual
	Doner menu	This is just for filtering stuff, not even a real menu
	Social share	This social share opens up social network sharing options
	Share	We’re getting colder

My original problem: share + navigation

Okay back to my original problem. I’m wanting to replace my “share” button with an “everything” button. It should meet these this Venn diagram:

1. A button that I want to click on
2. That indicates “context links” (share, download, buy, etc)
3. That also indicates “navigation links” (about, login, etc)

So let’s try some of these icons above on my site:

Looking at the gif above… honestly, the meatball menu is really good here. It gets me to 90% of what I want to achieve. When I see the I want to click it to BOTH interact with the map and read more about the site. That’s a success.

If this was for a client, I’d go with that.

But I’m here to have fun. I’m doing this for my own website.

So let’s keep going. But one last thing:

Maybe an everything “hamburger share” already exists?

I wanted to see if anyone else had this problem. I tried searching for “hamburger share menus” and found nothing. Then I tried searching for “menu share buttons”, and found nothing. I tried twenty different searches and really it sounds like a me problem. I love niches.

Then I went to the Noun Project and explored some ideas. I pulled out a few interesting ones here, and some wacky ones. Nothing that quite worked for me. I like the idea of the pyramid or a triangle hamburger menu which sort of has an arrow at the top, but I think it is too abstract.

Making my own “Everything” button

Time to try out some brand new icons. I spent some time exploring different options that were related closer to my original problem: share + navigation and came up with some abominations.

• Could I take the three lines of the hamburger and give it an arrow tail?
• Could the top bun curve outward like a launch arc?
• Could one of the lines break into three nodes, hinting at a share network?
• Or maybe it’s a share box with a little meat patty menu tucked beneath it?

When I started down this path, I really wanted something that communicated first “Share” and second, “Navigation” — but the more I think about it, the more I think an “Everything” menu would be an interesting thing to solve.

Maybe I’m not the one to solve the Everything button

Maybe there’s no perfect icon that says “inside this button you’ll find everything you’ll ever want”, but I think there should be.

I’ll keep working on it.

You can see what I ended up with (for now) at Flagthousand

Already solved this problem? Let’s see what you’ve got.