[perlgeek]

  > If I have JavaScript enabled, and send my friend (who has
  > JavaScript disabled) a "Hashbang" URI, he won't load the
  > content!

  > You're right.  This is the primary drawback of an
  > approach like this, and you'll need to figure out if
  > that's acceptable for you.

Simple answer: "no". It's not acceptable for me in any way. Not as a user, who disables JS by default (for speed, security and annoyance avoidance), and not as a site own either.

So, these URLs are still as bad as I think.

Do you know the old joke about Java where people can't by hammers anymore, but need to buy a HammerFactory to produce hammers for them (and then HammerFactoryFactory etc.). Requesting a page that then requests the right content from the server just feels like an unnecessary Factory step.

[mtrpcic]

That's why this approach isn't for everyone. To each his own. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the approach is meant more for projects that can be thought of as "web applications", rather than websites; things that would require JavaScript to be enabled to even work.

Also, another way of thinking of it is to stop thinking of the browser as a browser. If you do the hashbang thing properly, you're now treating your browser as an API consumption service, and treating it as you would any other application. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but does have drawbacks.

[andybak]

The problem is that - as Gawker have shown - people start thinking that techniques that might be acceptable for web apps are acceptable for content sites.

They don't think this through as they don't use anything other than a modern web browser with javascript switched on.