Dolphin currently uses a hamburger menu icon for more options. Most times this icon is used though, to expand a list on the side (example: https://hig.kde.org/components/navigation/globaldrawer.html?highlight=hamburger#behavior). I suggest to use a different icon in Dolphin, maybe the three vertical dots "more" icons. This might be a more general issue and not limited to Dolphin alone. Maybe the HIG can be extended to contain a section about this and behavior can be streamlined across apps. This point of view might be wrong though. Just looking at Firefox it seems to use it the same way as Dolphin. Just note that such different use cases of the same icon caused confusion for me in the past when I expected more options and got a slided in side panel in several circumstances.
In fact this is perfectly consistent: a hamburger menu is used when there is a "catch-all" menu of actions. It's basically the modern/questionable UX version of a traditional menubar. The three-dot icon means "More actions that couldn't fit in this toolbar/view". They are different.
I don't really agree. The three dot icon is often used in apps (Android) like the hamburger icon is used for Dolphin. Microsoft uses three vertical dots for that on Windows (in its store at least). Regarding the hamburger icon: That has two different use cases currently. One for expanding lists on the side (as seen on Windows, KDE HIG, Android (Play Store for example). The other one is for menus. Examples are Dolphin, GNOME files (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Files) and Firefox. This usage leads to confusion for the users (at least for me). Also I think the reason why the hamburger icon is designed that way is because it indicates that one can expand a side panel. So to my current understanding the usage of hamburger icons for menus is misleading in this sense. After having a short research, you are probably somewhat right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_button. It was originally designed for menus and is often used for menus. Also some interesting resource on how Android seems to use it: https://material.io/components/app-bars-top#anatomy. And https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/115468/what-the-difference-between-the-2-menu-icons-3-dots-kebab-and-3-lines-hambur. I argue currently there is not much consistency, maybe we can at least improve the situation on KDE.
What other platforms do is not relevant. We follow our own set of UI guidelines, not theirs. I agree that we can improve consistency in our own apps. Personally I'm not really super happy about either hamburger or overflow menus. They are icons-only which presents an inherent usability problem of the icon chosen is not universally recognizable, but the icons (three bars or dots) are meaningless.
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #3) > What other platforms do is not relevant. We follow our own set of UI > guidelines, not theirs. It somewhat is relevant: https://lawsofux.com/jakobs-law. Regardless: I think the HIG seem to only cover the hamburger menu in the sense of a sliding menu, most commonly known for mobile applications. > I agree that we can improve consistency in our own apps. Personally I'm not > really super happy about either hamburger or overflow menus. They are > icons-only which presents an inherent usability problem of the icon chosen > is not universally recognizable, but the icons (three bars or dots) are > meaningless. I don't have an extremely strong opinion about those overflow menus. I'd argue, though that the icons are not meaningless. Especially when the same icon (three bars) is sometimes used for an overflow menu and sometimes for sliding side menus. That really caused confusion for me for more than one time (not on KDE, though).