shebang

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A shebang (or hashbang) is the character sequence #!. In web development, it has been used in URLs to make AJAX content searchable by giving it a pseudo-URL. This is problematic because it relies on javascript to retrieve the content and can easily break.

See Also

• Gawker Learns the Hard Way Why ‘Hash-Bang’ URLs are Evil
• 2012-05-29 Twitter dropped use of hashbang #! URLs: Improving performance on twitter.com

  … permalink URLs are now simpler: they no longer use the hashbang (#!).

• Criticism: 2011-05-28 Dan Webb: It's About The Hashbangs

  …it most definitely _is_ about the hashbangs. This technique, on its own, is destructive to the web. The implementation is inappropriate, even as a temporary measure or as a downgrade experience.

• Twitter broke their own hashbang links, e.g. https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23microformats used to give # microformats hashtag results but now just redirects to their "explore" page.