Certainly an interesting take with the footer as the nav. It could work on information centric sites. It might seem strange working in a web app or a hybrid env

Certainly an interesting take with the footer as the nav. It could work on information centric sites. It might seem strange working in a web app or a hybrid environment, where portions of the site lean towards app while others don't. Looking at the comments here, that's highly skewed towards desktop use, guessing at the HN audience here, skilled with computer usage and decent handlers of visually dense information, I think most common users aren't like that. Many are using smaller screens, many are on mobile the majority of their computing time. When they do have larger screens, their glaze over when there's too much to look at (I think because they're not used to it, and too busy to ever get used to it, but either way). All of that to say, the hamburgers aren't for us, they're for secondary flows for common users.