What makes more sense (or is proper according to google)? Registering an event or a virtual pageview with Google Analytics when tracking navigation through a webpage with heavy use of ajax?
I had been using events to track this kind of thing, but I find myself kind of emulating the pageview mechanism by tracking the clicks through events like the following:
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'signup', 'clicked', 'header']);
should I instead be creating virtual pageviews when visitors click on links that call AJAX and bring up dynamic content?
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/signup/form']);
If this is a new content that user navigates to, then you should be using virtual pageviews.
If you use events for all navigation then some metrics will be unreliable like pages/visit, avgTimeOnPage, avgTimeOnSite, pageDepth. If you use pageviews for navigation these metrics will be closer to the truth.