Responsive design pattern: Navigation at the bottom + jump link

Question

I recently discovered an interesting design pattern for a responsive design. Instead of collapsing the navigation and show it on click/tap, the navigation 'is there' the whole time in the footer and can simply be accessed by using a jump link.

Example: http://contentsmagazine.com (play with the window size).

While I think one big downside of this pattern is the fact that the user can't access the menu at every time, I still love the that solution for it's simplicity.
I am even thinking of implementing something similar in one of the projects I am working on because of the really tight schedule.

But of course, I don't want to slaughter the user experience because I am under pressure, so what do you think – is this pattern alright to use? Can you think of any other downsides here besides the menu access (that shouldn't be too hard to solve, thinking fixed header)?

Answer 1

The pattern is OK, but an anchor link is a jarring experience for a navigation button. I do like having site navigation on the bottom of every page because it emphasizes content on smaller viewports. There are pros and cons to the solution; I wouldn't use it.

Some quotes I found about this method:

"Anchor jump can be awkward/disorienting – Quickly jumping to the footer of the site can be a bit disorientating." - Brad Frost

"On the Web, users have a clear mental model for a hypertext link: it should bring up a new page. Within-page links violate this model and thus cause confusion." - Jakob Nielsen