I believe you are correct about that aspect of turbolinks.
However, what I was alluding to in my comment was the background-load-and-swap approach used by turbolinks. An <a> could be enhanced to load the next page in the background, and then swap in the content. When combined with smart pre-fetching and pre-rendering, this will yield page boundaries that feel seamless.
Note that this is exactly how portals will make browsing feel faster. My abstract proposal is merely to make this a more general feature that can enhance plain links, rather than coupling it to a new UI element.
However, what I was alluding to in my comment was the background-load-and-swap approach used by turbolinks. An <a> could be enhanced to load the next page in the background, and then swap in the content. When combined with smart pre-fetching and pre-rendering, this will yield page boundaries that feel seamless.
Note that this is exactly how portals will make browsing feel faster. My abstract proposal is merely to make this a more general feature that can enhance plain links, rather than coupling it to a new UI element.