Good question- and yes this has changed. In Aug 2023, SA5’s URL querystring feature pivoted to focus & expand on the data-binding aspects, e.g. querystring value to form select field binding.
The SA5 community elected to remove the page-wide link-update mechanism, as it’s a bit ugly to have the tracking querystring on the URL. Most users preferred more elegant localStorage implementations instead.
So, it depends on what you’re trying to do. Each client build is a bit different.