You can if you wish always use AJAX and update the history state using Push State or for more compatibility use the hash with none HTML5 compliant browsers.
with this you can have your server load a page then javascript read the document.hash and resume the state of the application base on the state of the hash.
for example i got to /index.html i click into something for example a client to open the view client you can change the hash to #/view/client/{client_id}/ then if a reload or go back using the browser the hash with change and you can use the onhashchanged event to capture it and match the sites state to the new hash then same if a favorite a certain state
