Absolutely.
That should work no problem. I’m doing it in an app I’m developing. Aside from the friendly URL and SEO benefits, it also improves the mobile (i.e. low bandwidth) experience since data aren’t re-fetched during browser navigation.
Absolutely. Query string parameter support was added in v2 for just that reason. For instance, here are a couple deep links to the results for various search terms in the blog demo…
Also, type any word into the search box and press return to see the results. Then, use the browser forward/back buttons to see that the page does not reload (server is not hit again).