Nobody who writes Web applications would claim it's easy. The MVC programming paradigm can help ease the burden a bit, but widely available programming languages and frameworks have made such a choice difficult at best. An essay on Advogato bemoaning the blurred lines of development between browser and server got me thinking about the tool I'm using for my Web app development these days, NOLOH. Despite the fact that it's written in the ugly PHP language, NOLOH is an elegant and highly leverageable framework. NOLOH in Python (coming in the distant future) would be even better, but for now at least NOLOH even beats Python-based Django and Smalltalk-based Seaside.

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Back in the halcyon days of expert systems, one of the reasons a lot of us consultants and commentators found Texas Instruments' technologies to be so interesting was that they actually used their own tools in-house. There are a huge number of advantages to that, not the least of which is that technologies that are relied on by their developers are more often than not maintained and enhanced more frequently and in more useful ways than those that aren't.

That's just one more reason to love NOLOH, the exciting new Web app development environment and SuperFramework I've been using for the past 16 or so months. These guys build their own sites (apps) using NOLOH. And they add their own components to their kit bag using NOLOH "nodules" as well. As a result, they find and fix more bugs more rapidly than virtually all of the other frameworks I've checked out.

Latest example: some time in the next couple of days, the NOLOH Dev Zone will feature a new video tutorial on how to create a non-trivial app that is integrated into the NOLOH Dev Zone (and elsewhere in that app). Their Comment System -- which is a neatly hierarchical comment management component a la Huffington Post -- was written in less than 50 lines of code. The video tutorial actually walks you through how it was done. In the process, they also manage to show off some nifty features of NOLOH. Including how, in two lines of code, you can make any object fade into view on the screen. Sweetness.

All of this without a single line of HTML or JavaScript.

Get into their beta program now before their available slots fill up. Tell 'em I sent you.

During the past 16 or so months, a great many of my friends and colleagues have been asking me what I've been up to. I've had to be vague about details because I've been working with a brand-new Web application development platform that has been under wraps until now.

Beginning Monday, you can not only get a look at this extraordinary framework, you can begin using it as NOLOH officially launches its public beta program to serious developers. Insider Tip: If you pop into that site any time now, you may find that you'll get into the beta game early. They're going to severely limit the number of betas they allow before they close it down, so you want to jump on the bandwagon as soon as you can.

NOLOH is unlike any other Web app framework on the planet. Believe me, I've looked at all of them as I've searched for a tool that met my complex and demanding set of design requirements. NOLOH (an acronym for Not One Line Of HTML) is fully object-oriented from the inside out and the bottom up, Written in PHP, NOLOH has so many features that just listing them would take up a lot more space than I want to devote to this pre-announcement today.

The key features that drew me to NOLOH and caused me to bet my company on an unreleased proprietary framework long before it was finalized for public use include:

1. Cross-Platform Transparency. NOLOH is absolutely the first-ever app framework I've seen that fulfills the original Java Lie of write once, run anywhere. Apps you build with NOLOH run on all major platforms in all major browsers and you never have to give the issue a second thought.
2. AJAX for Free. Other app frameworks I considered supported the AJAX-style UI magic like animations, fades, expand/collapse, and other tricks that make the UI smooth and seamless. NOLOH builds all of this and more into every single component in the environment. No JavaScript files to include, no separate code to write.
3. Outside-World Friendly. Unlike virtually every other framework I evaluated, NOLOH creates apps that are search-engine friendly and bookmarkable. It also supports the browser more completely, including the proper functioning of the browser's Back button that throws most other apps done in other frameworks for a serious loss.
4. Single-Language Programming. No HTML, no JavaScript, no XML, unless you really want or need them. NOLOH supports the use of these last-generation languages and tools, but you can do all of your app development in a superset of PHP that is not taxing even to a fairly junior PHP developer.

There are a lot more. You'll hear about more and more in coming days and weeks.

If, like me, your primary interest or role is building Rich Internet Apps that run in any modern browser, you just can't do any better than NOLOH. And you can get started right away. Sign up for their beta program right now. You'll get a hosted sandbox space on their server, great support, decent and always-growing documentation, and a feeling of power and efficiency in your daily work you probably haven't experienced in a long, long time.

NOLOH is the brainchild of Asher Snyder. He and Philip Ross co-developed the NOLOH kernel. Philip Goetz, a long-time software entrepreneur and manager, herded the cats while Clay Gordon has taken on the role of evangelist, at least officially. He'll get lots of help from me.

I'm going to be blogging a lot more about NOLOH. In fact, I've created a new category for it here but for some ridiculous reason Drupal isn't recognizing the category except for me when I'm logged in.