One of the most frustrating parts about being a professional web developer, is dealing with overly complex designs for simple trivial things, like, hamburger menus.
That beautiful, buttery-smooth, multi-level animated dropdown menu your designer just handed you? The one with the custom illustrations, morphing icons, and parallax backgrounds? Yeah, that one's going to cost you.
** this is just an example..by no means worth $10,000
Seems simple enough. Three lines that turn into an X and slide or fade in some rectangular menu. How hard could it be?
Let's get into it. Because when a designer and multiple stakeholders are involved, typically, things are going to get challenging relatively quickly.
Back in my corporate days, this would happen on a weekly basis. Somebody somewhere in the office would have a meeting and a request would get sent off to the designer.
And I love designers. This is by no means a knock on designers. They create magic out of a few basic shapes and colors. And 9/10 times, I would love their work. But the reason why I loved it, was because it was amazingly complicated.
The reality, was that bringing their exact idea to life (pixel by pixel, frame by frame) was going to take some work and some time:
- Cross-browser animation compatibility testing
- Touch event handling for mobile
- Accessibility considerations (ARIA labels, keyboard navigation)
- State management for open/closed states
- Z-index warfare with existing components
- Performance optimization for 60fps animations
- Fallback handling for users with reduced motion preferences
- SEO considerations for dynamic contextual links
Some of those things listed above might not be in the official spec-sheet, but deep down every web developer knows that they all have to be accounted for, and if you miss one, someone's going to point it out.
What started as "just add a hamburger menu" becomes a 20-hour implementation touching six different files, three CSS frameworks, and your sanity.
And meetings. Lots of meetings. Because design specs change frequently.
The Parallax Tax
"Can we make the menu background move independently when scrolling?"
This innocent question just added:
- Scroll event listeners (performance killers)
- RequestAnimationFrame optimization
- Mobile Safari's bouncy scroll handling
- Intersection Observer APIs for efficiency
- Battery life considerations on mobile devices
- Graceful degradation for older browsers
This is a total hyperbolic exaggeration on my behalf, because most developers probably wouldn't optimize for Safari or battery life.
And you can of course use an animation library and save yourself a bit of time. But that isn't "free". Odds are you'll get a hit or two from PageSpeed Insights by the time you're done.
The Custom Surcharge
Every custom element compounds exponentially:
Custom Icons
- SVG optimization and sprite generation
- Icon font fallbacks
- Retina display considerations
- Loading state animations
Custom Animations
- Easing function calculations
- Hardware acceleration considerations
- Animation orchestration timing
- Reduced motion accessibility compliance
Custom Interactions
- Hover state micro-interactions
- Touch gesture recognition
- Focus management for keyboard users
- Error state handling
And worse of all? It needs to match a design spec sheet perfectly. If a pixel or animation is off anywhere, it's not done yet.
I once worked on a menu that had a slight "flicker" to it when opening and closing. It was the subtlest of things, but it was there haunting me whenever I clicked on it. And after hours of debugging, I gave up and submitted it to the QA team hoping it was just a "me" problem.
And of course, some hours later, it's back on my queue, because that flicker is a no go. Not in production.
The problem was due to a very specific and known z-index issue with that browser, and it took some more hours in order to figure out a workaround using JavaScript.
It Needs to Work on Mobile
Personally, being honest, I'm terrible at this part. I typically save mobile for last, because 95% of all traffic to the sites I work on are coming from desktop.
So while you might read that "mobile-first" is the only viable option, I argue otherwise.
But to truly get this menu done, and out of your queue, you need to account for responsive behavior:
- Touch vs. hover interaction paradigms
- Screen real estate constraints
- Different interaction patterns (tap vs. click)
- OS-specific behavior quirks (iOS Safari, IE?)
- Performance considerations on lower-end devices
But Wait, There's More!
That's just the initial implementation. Because developers also have to factor in:
- Maintenance burden: Every browser update is a potential breaking change
- Technical debt: Custom solutions are harder for new team members to understand
- Performance monitoring: Complex interactions need ongoing optimization
- User testing: Complex UIs require more extensive usability testing
And the more complex the design is, the greater the maintenance burden.
The Real Cost Breakdown
The $10,000 amount I've mentioned several times in this post was just an example. Most times it wont be that high. But other times, it will probably be even higher.
I based it mainly on the amount of time that it took me several years ago to finish a new bold menu design. One that saw several revisions, several meetings and several nights of lost sleep.
Not to mention that this menu also involved work from at least 3 other people.
Your mileage may vary.
The Middle Ground
I'm not advocating for boring design in any way. I'm advocating for informed design decisions.
Something that I learned at some point in my career, was that often times complex design was due to a lack of understanding from the designer about the side-effects of over-complicating elements.
Sometimes showing them a simple PageSpeed Insights showing a 5% point reduction was enough to convince them to tone things down a bit.
And sometimes the fancy animations were more about them getting to showcase their skills, and less about improving the user experience. Which fair enough, since it's their work on display for all to see.
But there has to be balance.
The Bottom Line
That menu is going to cost you. Not just in development hours, but in performance, maintainability, and opportunity cost. Every hour spent perfecting a dropdown animation is an hour not spent on features that actually move a business forward.
So if you're a developer, and you get assigned to work on a hamburger menu at some point in your career, make sure that everyone knows that it might cost them.
And if you're a designer, remember that parallax isn't always free.