[olihb]

I invested a lot of time in learning and deploying Flex. It's been a lifesaver when I had to code quick visualizations, dashboards, analytic tools, db interfaces, etc.

Now I would like to transition over HTML5, but it seems that all the tools and frameworks are incomplete, not easy to integrate, etc. and now I need to know javascript, html, css, etc. and the language to code the backend (In my case usually very CPU intensive). With Flex I only needed to know as3 and my backend language.

What would be best framework similar to Flex that would abstract the ugliness of javascript, html and css? It's not my idea of a fun time to fight layout bugs and different javascript/css/html implementations.

[robin_reala]

jQuery abstracts DOM weirdness across browsers. Learning plain JavaScript will give you a deeper understanding of why jQuery does certain things. Using node.js on the backend will allow you to transfer your JS skills over.

Regarding HTML and CSS, your best best when starting is to use a quick framework to get you up and running. I’d suggest Twitter’s Bootstrap: http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/ . End of the day you’re going to have to learn them yourself though. You can make things much easier for yourself by restricting your browser compatibility.

[hello_moto]

None. Sorry to break the news. GWT might be the least out of the bunch but at the end of the day, it is still css and html.

[mnutt]

Maybe check out Sencha. I'm personally not a fan of it, but I think it's a little closer to Flex than most javascript frameworks.

[watty]

I think the best bet is JQuery - it's not bad but definitely not as quick for GUIs. Browser compatibility is still a crapshoot when working with html/css/js and it will only get worse with HTML5. Good luck.

[teyc]

All this uncertainty will hold up a lot of projects until the dust settles.