Twitter to eliminate their hashbang (#!) URLs

In a conversation triggered by Tim Haines, Twitter front end engineer Dan Webb refers to his article “It's About The Hashbangs” on the problems of using #! URLs in JavaScript. He then goes on to confirm:

@danwrong:

plus, now I'm in charge of undoing twitters hashbang URLs I can confirm that all the issues in that article are very real.

@timhaines:

x months from now (when your project completes) Twitter will no longer use hashbangs?

@danwrong:

correct. All gone. It was a mistake for several reasons. PushState or bust.

@timhaines:

You're going to revert to page refreshes if the browser doesn't support PushState? Adding PushState support progressively?

@danwrong:

yep.

The hashbang URLs are a nuisance. For example: there are always two versions of each URL, e.g.:

    https://twitter.com/rauschma/status/171801699395178497
    https://twitter.com/#!/rauschma/status/171801699395178497

If JavaScript is enabled then the former version is rewritten to the latter version after the page has loaded. Traditionally, hashbang URLs were the only way of dynamically updating a URL to reflect the current application state. But with widespread support for pushState [1] that changed a while ago. You now can arbitrarily change a URL, as long as the domain stays the same.

Related reading:

1. “The pushState() method” on MDN

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