> For example, in a scriptless world, your HN up/down vote can't be done without a full page load You're incorrect. The up/down vote can be a form POST, whic

> For example, in a scriptless world, your HN up/down vote can't be done without a full page load You're incorrect. The up/down vote can be a form POST, which receives a 204 No Content in response. The only thing one would lose would be the change in the vote arrow. Even that could be achieved in a world in which HTML allows PUTs: PUT to the page URL the specific bytes required to select an arrow, and return a 204 No Content or 206 Partial Content. In the first case the browser would know exactly which bytes to update, because it PUT them; in the second it'd know exactly which bytes to update, because the server sent them.