Hi Tim and thanks for the answer,
navigating or showing different content based on backing beans is an anti-pattern IMHO. I know JSF is a resource and component based framework, but that doesn't mean we have to ignore the request incl. URL entirely. Bookmarkable URLs and the ability of page refreshing are basic essentials for SEO and UX. I found out this misguided JSF
philosophy somewhat too late, and I guess I'll be rather using request based frameworks like Spring MVC for new projects when possible.