I have hired someone to re-design my site and have been told that text links as well as menu buttons are not important anymore. I was always taught that you needed text links at the bottom of the page as well as menu buttons. Are they still important?
I think that sidewide links (menu links/navigation links) are still important. Placing the same links on all of your pages you tell the search engines that you find them important. Hopefully the search engines will think so to.
Just use the header and footer links (preferably all as text), keep in mind your user's journey. Whatever is good for visitor is good for google