[asnyder]

Originally posted in blog comment:

Indeed, we originally had this idea back in 2004 (pre-AJAX craze), which led to the creation of NOLOH (http://www.noloh.com), available to the public since 2009 (commercial since 2005, public beta in 2008).

NOLOH allows you to create your website/WebApp in a single tier and then NOLOH will output your application in a "single page". Furthermore, it takes care of bookmarking, back button, and rendering to search engines transparently to the developer. No additional pages necessary. It also handles all the client-server communication allowing your application to be consistently lightweight and on-demand.

It was very interesting reading this, as the beginning matches closely with certain portions of our original business plan. Ahh, nostalgia.

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of NOLOH

[thasmin]

NOLOH's tutorials are hard to find on that web site.

[asnyder]

I'm sorry it was difficult for you to find the necessary resources. On the home there's a link to a series of around 20 YouTube videos, a developer zone with 30 extensive articles, a full and in-sync API reference, and a growing Demo section. You can also sign-up for a free hosted sandbox where you can get started right away, without the need to download or host anything yourself.

If you would be so kind, could you please tell us what sort of resources were you looking for, and where you were expecting to find them? Thanks.

[jmtulloss]

When I clicked on the link, I almost clicked off before seeing what language this was even targeted at.

The first point is "Develop in a single, object-oriented language." That's just buzz.

Line 2: "Stop worrying about HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, and Comet." More buzz. Everybody says I can stop worrying about these things, but I still don't believe you. Is it web based?

Line 3: "Deploy seamlessly across all browsers and operating systems." Great, so it is web based and does exactly what every other web page does. Still not sold.

Line 4: "Create lightweight, on-demand websites and WebApps" More buzz, I don't care yet.

Line 5: "Boost your productivity. Develop faster, with fewer resources." Everybody says this, still not sold, ready to leave the site.

Line 6: "Enjoy many other exciting features." Great. I'm all the way through the bullet list and I still don't have any real idea what this project does.

Finally, as I scan the small print, I see that it is PHP based and is optimized for web apps.

This seems like a good idea, but the site is not great for discovering that.

One of my favorite new project sites is for vows (http://vowsjs.org/). It has one sentence declaring the goal, two sentences with output showing typical usage, and a brief paragraph explaining the purpose. All of it looks good too, and the rest of the documentation is very complete. I'd take a page out of their book if I were you.

[asnyder]

Thanks for the feedback. We do have that huge header that says "Build for the Web Faster & Easier!", thus we would hope you immediately conclude it's web based. For most of those points above, the keywords are actually links to more information for each of those points.

Line 3 in particular is meant to emphasize that you can deploy across all browsers and operating systems, this is in fact not what every web page does, as most web pages would normally require tinkering to work in various different browsers versions.

However, I do see your point. We're in the process of adding a functional code sample to an area of the home, however, it's very difficult to strike the balance to appeal to those that make the software decisions and hardcore developers. Something like vows is clearly targeted towards the hardcore, whereas we're attempting to target a broader range, which includes the hardcore developers.

It is difficult and definitely something we're trying to improve. We appreciate your honest feedback and will definitely take your advice into consideration for our next update. Thank You.

[scott_s]

It's way too much. Complete overload. And, unfortunately, as the parent poster mentioned, despite there being a wall o' text, there's not much actual information.

You should be able to answer this simple question: where do you want my eyes to go first? Right now, there's a few different headlines and buttons competing for my attention. When that happens, I often don't bother figuring out where I should look and give up.

I think you have the attitude that someone is already interested in what you've done. If that's true, then more information is better. You need to come at this from the perspective that most people won't care what you've done. You need to convince them you did something cool. Make sure that after five seconds of being on your site, they know what you think is most important.

[asnyder]

It's very interesting. We use to have much more technically minded copy, but that wasn't as effective. Interestingly enough the points that were criticized are in fact some of the actual core tenets of NOLOH, it's not buzz, those are it's most attractive features.

Clearly, what's happening here is that the skeptical reader is dismissing them, and certainly not clicking to get more information when more information is available.

We'll definitely try to strike a fair balance in the updates ahead.

[csomar]

Please read http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writingcontentthatworksfo... and may be you'll change your opinion about how web copies should be.

[thasmin]

Even when I was looking around, I could see that there were a lot of resources. I'd like to see a very short app - 50 lines of code - that shows off the main feature of the framework. More importantly, I need this to be one of the links on the top of the page if it's not on the home page.