I've been playing around with this for several years now; building more or less elaborate frameworks for server side rendering and dividing the interface into separate pages.
I blame Seaside [0] for corrupting me. Never used it to build anything, but once the idea of building the user interface on the server was in my head there was no way back.
Though I have to admit I still find JSON really convenient for submissions compared to using fields for everything as it allows massaging the data on the way.
Besides that I've found the approach to be a total success. Pages load instantly, bookmarks and back buttons work as expected and most of the application stays on the server.
I blame Seaside [0] for corrupting me. Never used it to build anything, but once the idea of building the user interface on the server was in my head there was no way back.
Though I have to admit I still find JSON really convenient for submissions compared to using fields for everything as it allows massaging the data on the way.
Besides that I've found the approach to be a total success. Pages load instantly, bookmarks and back buttons work as expected and most of the application stays on the server.
[0] http://www.seaside.st/