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Can you elaborate?

I don't follow how pushState (being a javascript function) replaces the need for _escaped_fragment contraption for letting crawlers fetch page snapshots in a specific state.

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With pushState you can actually push a URL without the hash. It looks like I'm GETting /about, while it's really just / with the content of /about fetched via AJAX.

A HTTP GET /about should of course give the same content as the AJAX version.

Right, but this still doesn't alleviate the need for "prerendering" specific pages for the crawler, which is the most tedious part of the whole thing. In other words, when a crawler requests /about, it should be getting a fully-formed About page with the content already in place, and not a bare container that ajax'es the content on page load (which is how most of pageless sites work).

Yeah - that sucks, but is actually also necessary for optimal performance for users as well. I don't think it's excusable to have two HTTP requests for page content. (and hash bangs are just as bad when loaded directly)

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