[asnyder]

There doesn't need to be any additional complexity, if anything it can be simpler. I hate to constantly push NOLOH, but we've been doing this since 2005, and it works. It's been used by companies, and sites large and small, and no extra complexity necessary. If anything, it's significantly simpler than the normal web multi-tiered paradigm.

Sure, if you try to do this manually, it's complex, but if you use a tool like NOLOH, there are others, it becomes very simple, and even more natural than conventional web development.

It's so frustrating reading these comments as if the tools don't exist today. They do, and they have. Every year or so I'll read another post that re-hashes a small part of something that an existing framework, like NOLOH, does, and it'll be touted as the way forward.

We should be able use the tools that are available, there's no need to re-create the wheel every few months, or start over. If the cool kids in SV aren't using a tool, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It simply means that the cool kids aren't using it. Likely because those cool kids like to re-create the wheel, over and over and over again.

Sorry for the rant. This sort of stuff gets very frustrating.

[prodigal_erik]

It doesn't appear that they simply reinvented what you did. Their approach works well without js, meanwhile NOLOH and the four "powered by" sites are mazes of mostly dead links and missing alt text (one site has nothing more than a blurb blaming the visitor for the author's neglect, which I wouldn't showcase).

[asnyder]

It's clear you didn't actually click on the sites in the powered by, but rather went completely on ShrinkTheWeb's out of date thumbnails. There is not a single dead link, and the image with the text is a reference to a server error, but clicking on the site goes to the live site.

There are 3 pages, with 9 live sites. There are many more, but not everybody decides to post their sites to the powered by section. We'll be starting a push to get NOLOH authors to post their sites there in the near future.

Furthermore, if you would've actually taken the time to read through our site, you would see that NOLOH does in fact render content without JS, if the developer chooses, which we're constantly improving. You can read our blog for more information.

It's somewhat shocking that this is what HN has come down to. Writing a reply without actually verifying your comment. I'm starting to think I don't belong here anymore, it's starting to feel like high school all over again.

[prodigal_erik]

I don't mean thumbnails. http://www.noloh.com/?poweredby/ shows me four sites and no way to navigate to more. If I follow the link to the last, http://www.diffpaste.com/, I see "Paste", "Diff", and "Latest Pastes" across the top and categories ranging from "PHP (67)" to "C++ (1)" down the right, none of which do anything at all. Likewise, http://www.noloh.com/ has several highlighted phrases and "Read More" divs which look like they were supposed to be links but don't go anywhere. Many other links all lead to http://dev.noloh.com/ rather than whichever page was intended, because the server can't see the path after the # sign. If you thought this stuff all worked without js, I'm sorry but I assure you much of it does not, so the happyworm.com crew seem to be onto something good.

[asnyder]

You're basing your assumptions on a broken premise. You're clearly not browsing normally, but rather are crippling your browser in some way, after which you decide to bash whatever you can, without clearly identifying your methods.

As I mentioned earlier it's at the developer's discretion as to whether they want to enable JS degradation or not. Sometimes when an application is sufficiently complex a developer may choose not to, or not have certain actions map to links.

You shouldn't base your assumptions on one implementation, but rather, read what the technology claims to do and then try it so you can actually see, rather than just slash and burn.

It's people like you that really make me wonder whether we should even continue down the standards based route, or continue to support text-based browsers, as mentioned in our latest blog posts http://dev.noloh.com/#/blog/, or http://dev.noloh.com/?/blog/ for you. Not a single client or user has ever asked for such features, but we always get complaints from the die-hards. So we work and implement it, to what effect? Next you'll complain that some app that uses NOLOH doesn't do XYZ. There's nothing we can do about that, we can't force users to upgrade, or implement a feature, we can only offer it.

Clearly it doesn't matter what we do, or how compatible we try to be, you won't care, won't listen, and won't actually try it.

[prodigal_erik]

Firefox 3.6.8 on Vista Home Premium x64 without js on. That's all.

If I were in the market for a web framework, I would not take it on faith that I could rely upon interoperability features the site claims but does not demonstrate. And I wouldn't write the demo myself unless I had already ruled out your competitors.

If you decide to drop it, I have no doubt you can still find a large potential market of developers either indifferent or ignorant about the ongoing disintegration of the open HTML web. It comes down to what kind of effect you're comfortable with having on the industry.

[asnyder]

There we go, without js, which you didn't identify at first. Rather, you just started to list things that seems like they weren't working.

The best way to determine if something lives up to its claims is to try it. You can't look at sites done in NOLOH and then expect them to have implemented or turned on every feature.

Furthermore, it's amazing that when our competitors 280north, or Sproutcore, or whatever else is "cool" posts something nobody complains that you HAVE to have js. No degradation options, no text-based browsers. Nobody complains that their sites aren't in their tool, or that they have significantly less resources than we do.

As soon as we post something there's usually somebody that steers the conversation to a different topic and then criticizes us for one reason or another. In this case you successfully diverted the conversation from "single page" websites into a conversation on js degradation, which in the case of NOLOH is really irrelevant to most users.

Search engines get a different version from the js, non-js versions, thus the non-js version is only for humans that specifically decide to turn off their js. Could it be better, yes, will it be better, yes, can we mandate it, no.