Ask HN: What happened to # in URLs?

1 points by cauterize ↗ HN
At one point I remember seeing lots of hashbangs (#!) in URLs, as of recent that has no longer been the case. What happened?

1 comment

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The hashbang was a stop gap solution for helping search engines see ajax content. The companies that had turned to hashbangs, have just as quickly turned away from using that technique because it's a poor hack, not a well thought-out solution with a roadmap forward. pushState is the, apparently, likely path forward (Google for example has put its weight behind that approach over their previous support for hashbangs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiAF9VdvRPw).

The # is still very widely used in urls, for direct linking to a part of a page for example.