documentcloud/backbone — pull request #1681 by pctj101 (2012-09-26 12:39:35+00:00)
Title: Enable IE8 to load a static page

Previously if you went to:
http://domain.com/some/page

IE8 with pushState would rewrite the URL to:
http://domain.com/#some/page

That's usually good if there is a route for 'some/page', however if there is no route, IE8 tries to load the root URL (/) and then do nothing else.

This would mean that some/page would load, then get cleared off, leading to a strange and bad user experience.

With this change, backbone only changes the current page on history start if there is a matching route.

Push state enabled browsers are untouched in operation.