He suggests using real URLs - instead of "/#!5753509/hello-world-this-is-the-new-lifehacker" we would have "/5753509/hello-world-this-is-the-new-lifehacker". Sounds great, but what happens when you click to a new article, which is loaded with AJAX?
Well you've already confirmed that the client is running Javascript so:
1. Use JavaScript to rewrite the existing clean URLs into JS function calls (or however you want to handle that)
2. Use window.history.pushState to push the clean (canonical) URL for the page you're viewing to the browser.
My point was the degradation to hashbang (which is what most users are going to see) is absolutely horrid, to the point that I would actively avoid it.
Well you've already confirmed that the client is running Javascript so:
1. Use JavaScript to rewrite the existing clean URLs into JS function calls (or however you want to handle that)
2. Use window.history.pushState to push the clean (canonical) URL for the page you're viewing to the browser.
I'm not sure why this isn't obvious...