HTML5 PushState Demo

This is an experiment to implement a demo web application that's:

• Crazy fast: by not loading the full page with each navigation
• Degradable: works even without Javascript enabled, but perhaps not with the crazy speed
• Bookmark-able and SEO-friendly: the URL+Title can be bookmarked and accessed directly through the browser or by search engines
• Browser history friendly: the back and forward browser buttons do the expected thing

The HTML5 PushState mainly provides the last point, but is essential for this approach to work. To provide the other bits, it turns out that there are 2 main strategies (that I know of anyway):

1. PJAX: Like AJAX but instead of pulling data from the server, this pulls partial pages, and uses PushState to update the title and history
2. A Javascript MVC (or equivalent) Client-side Framework that works with HTML5 PushState. In this case, I'd selected Backbone.js.

The different versions are in branches of the repository:

• master is the plain jane web application
• pjax branch contains the version using jquery-pjax.js
• backbone branch contains the version using Backbone.js