Answer by plus- for AngularJS routing without the hash '#'

In fact you need the # (hashtag) for non HTML5 browsers.

Otherwise they will just do an HTTP call to the server at the mentioned href.The # is an old browser shortcircuit which doesn't fire the request, which allows many js frameworks to build their own clientside rerouting on top of that.

You can use $locationProvider.html5Mode(true) to tell angular to use HTML5 strategy if available.

Here the list of browser that support HTML5 strategy: http://caniuse.com/#feat=history