Rewriting URLs without changing the address in the location or address bar?

OK, how is this done?!

For example, vBSEO writes the URLS for the forum in html format, but we all know that they're redirecting to php?this=232 or whatever.

So why is it when I used 301 redirects for my non forum parts of the site ( eg article350.html = newsarticle.php?id=350 ) that the full php?etc shows in the address bar, when the "nice" URL shows in vBSEOd parts of the site?

What's the trick here?

This is how I currently do it:

RewriteRule ^news(.*).html /index.php?page=mini2news&articlestart=$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^article(.*).html /index.php?page=newsitem&newsid=$1 [L,R=301]


And that changes the address bar.

Hello Paul,

you should remove "R=301" part from rewrite rules (so that URL is rewritten but not redirected), like:
RewriteRule ^news(.*).html /index.php?page=mini2news&articlestart=$1 [L]

I always thought 301 was the "search engine friendly" way?

I'm confused by this (obviously).

These are two different cases - "RewriteRule" can be used for either rewrite or redirect.