That's a quite fair point, but as a counter point in most business cases you do want specific views (even specific searches and user applied filters) to be addr

That's a quite fair point, but as a counter point in most business cases you do want specific views (even specific searches and user applied filters) to be addressable - it's one reason why I think the history/location API is such a necessity for SPAs. And if you do have an address like example.com/#widget/view?hideWhitespace=false then you can bind your link href to that address and then, if the link is engaged without modification, do your fancy SPA stuff. I also think in the modern world that as long as your assets are all properly versioned with good cache control headers using actually web requests for navigation instead of a self-contained SPA makes a lot less sense. Once upon a time an SPA was a solution to shifty internet, limited bandwidth and rich web experiences - those arguments have become a lot less valid in the modern world. (this is a topic extremely near and dear to my heart as a (eh-sorta) full stack developer that needs to suffer through many poorly built applications as a user)