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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

The difference between a web site and a web application isn't binary. Modern web sites increasingly blur the lines between the two.

Hashbang URLs are bad because they damage the addressability of the Web. If I can't take a URL, telnet to port 80, run GET /path and get back a representation of the thing that the URL points to, that URL isn't really part of the Web - it's part of a JavaScript application delivery engine that happens to run over HTTP.

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Here's the thing: I don't hate hashbang URLs, I hate [site]'s use of hashbangs URLs. One example of [site] that stands out in particular is lifehacker. Why in the world does a blog need that? There isn't a good reason.

I don't think anybody opposes it in cases where it actually makes sense, but I assert that the dividing line is pretty clear.

Do you mean the dividing line between web sites and web applications?

How would you categorise Flickr, or YouTube, or Wikipedia, or Yelp, or Lanyrd, or Craigslist - or pretty much any other UGC site? I'd argue that all of them could be described as both.

The distinction between web sites and web applications is not granular enough to make this decision. What you should be considering as a developer/designer of a web site/app is not about what bucket Flickr or YouTube or Yelp falls into, but what specific screens should be accessible with shebangs and which screens should not.

Flickr's photo indexes and Yelp's listings and reviews should probably be accessible via regular old URLs. But Flickr's uploader screen? Adding a new listing to Yelp? If you're ok with leaving behind users who have javascript turned off, it simply _does_ _not_ matter. In those cases, why not take advantage of the snappy UX that shebanged interfaces offer?

That's true, to a point. My principle objections to hashbang URLs is greatly reduced for pages which people are never intended to link to - private "edit" interfaces protected by a login are a prime example.

Personally I'm not OK leaving behind non-JS users in my own development, but provided a site's public pages are accessible I'm not too bothered what they're doing when people log in.

All of those are examples of websites that would or do suffer from excessive use of javascript.

I agree 100%.

If you want to curl a hashbang URL (or access its content in some other non-Javascript-requiring way), there's a pretty easy way to do it. Just do the same thing Google does and remove the hashbang. It's like getting mad because you can't parse the XML you find at a JSON endpoint.

"If you want to curl a hashbang URL (or access its content in some other non-Javascript-requiring way), there's a pretty easy way to do it. Just do the same thing Google does and remove the hashbang."

Which command line option on curl does that? (Maybe they haven't updated the man page? http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html ).

Oh, if you reply, could you do it in the form of interpretative dance.

sed 's/#!\///g' urls.txt | xargs curl

Yeah, not that hard dude.

> sed 's/#!\///g' urls.txt | xargs curl

So easy, you've actually got it wrong.

Certain special characters after the hash-bang need to be url-encoded, and then that value needs to be added to what's before the #! by including a query string parameter of _escaped_fragment_, checking first whether there is already a query string so as to append the information rather than incorrectly whacking on a '?'.

Plus, this isn't in the form of interpretive dance. So no content for you.

Ok fine, so it will take 10 minutes to whip up and test a quick Ruby script instead of 30 seconds to think of the regular expression. I stand corrected.

Now multiply that 10 minutes by number of scripts, utilities, libraries and applications in the world that handle URLs, and you'll be somewhere close to the magnitude of effort required to work around these broken URLs.

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