It's About The Hashbangs

Its About The Hashbangs. Blogged because it is a pretty good description of what is wrong with these #! in addresses. The part after the # is only client-side, the server never sees it - any form of server-side redirection and server-side routing is completely out of the question. Also, server-side access controls are largely out of the question, the server only sees the main page. For single-page applications like TiddlyWiki, this is all fine - everything is already in one file and it is the declared purpose of these applications to be structured this way. For websites like Twitter or even news sites like those of Gawker Media, it is simply absurd. Twitter can perhaps guarantee due to its banal structure that the URLs to tweets also work with #! in the long run, in that a corresponding JavaScript part remains in the homepage forever (which is already pretty silly), but news sites will sooner or later simply drop the old #! URLs - and thus produce massive link rot.