[danaw]

I'd agree with most everyone here that plain javascript should be your first step. However, once you get past that stage I'd recommend the following:

- React: by far the most enjoyable UI tool I've used in a long time. Single-direction data flow is easy to reason about and requires very few new concepts to learn.

- Reflux: have your react components trigger events that update your data store. I find flux to be a little too complicated for my tastes. Reflux removes the need for a dispatcher and just has events and stores.

- Browserify: makes writing modular JavaScript much much easier by using node-style CommonJS imports.

- react-router: react style routes makes structuring your apps routes intuitive.

I've included these tools and more in a starter project I have on github: https://github.com/builtbybig/starter