Switching from web to desktop development
I've recently come across a project called Titanium. It's a platform for developing native desktop (and mobile) applications using web technology (html/css, javascript and server-side languages like python, ruby and PHP! That's exactly what I was looking for. However, I haven't found no decent documentation or examples, community is small, so it seems to be underdeveloped right now. It mostly aims at mobile development rather that desktop. 
Apart from Titanium, I currently don't see a better way for a web developer to go.
Being a web developer (php, symfony, doctrine) for 2 years now, I was recently asked by a friend to come up with a desktop solution. So I developed a project, installed a LAMP on his machine and he is mostly happy using it now. But I'm not. It just doesn't seem right to wait for a server response from a localhost. Obviously php isn't suited for desktop development. So, my question is: what language \ framework would you advice a php programmer if he was going to develop a desktop application (something that you can install, that has it's own gui, but utilizes the similar concepts of web apps: css, javascript, orm).
I would like to bring up Python as a possible answer to my question. Does anyone have an experience of developing a desktop app with Python, utilizing an ORM and(or) HTML-based GUI?