Right and wrong. If that’s all you need to do search for SennaJS or PJAX. What really f/e frameworks and libraries help you build is complex interactive interfaces. If you don’t see their use then means you don’t need them.
Yes. If people are using full MVC frameworks for the sole reason of avoiding page reloads then they really need to look at PJAX etc.
I can add PJAX to existing Django sites in about half an hour. It degrades gracefully, allows me to carry on generating my HTML on the server in a language I prefer and carries a very small cognitive overhead.
I understand TurboLinks in Rails is essentially the same concept?