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A friend of mine says that the only part of the URL you can change on older browsers and not refresh the page is the anchor-tag part.

OTOH, if you only put search params in the anchor-tag part, the initial search is much slower on slow connections.

Still, infoleaks are BAD. Page load and update speed shouldn't come before safety of a user's private information.

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Strange to cite a "friend" when stating a basic fact about how web browsing works.

Fact-checking is good, but it takes time and it's not always worth the trouble. I'd rather see someone use an honest qualifier than either claim certainty they don't have, or not post at all.

Two things:

1) I'm not a web dev, I'm a backend and networking guy.

2) Given that -AIUI- any non-host, non-scheme, or non-path part of the URL can be programatically altered in a newer browser without triggering a page reload, I don't see how one can call the behavior a "basic fact about how web browsing works". I would call that sort of thing an "implementation detail". :)

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