I know very little HTML or web dev, but I would like to write an HTML5 app with a fairly complex UI. Is there a framework that stands out among the rest for this type of job? Do I need a framework; or can I just do everything in straight HTML+CSS+JS? And what about GWT?
Thanks!
As a general HTML5 starting template, Boilerplate is always a good choice.
It will optimize and chain all your scripts and CSS files, as well as your HTML code and images, it also comes with useful tools like Modernizr.
If you are looking for JavaScript libraries, YUI is a very good library when it comes to UI, though maybe a little more complicated than jQuery or jQuery UI at first. I found it better than jQuery UI, and can work together with jQuery anyway.
EDIT
You may also be interested in Ext JS. Looking at the demo it provides, seems really like a powerful library with many ready to use UI widgets. Never used it though, and looks like it only offers a commercial license.
GWT is a good way to go for a complex web application, particularly if you're familiar with java but not javascript. GWT now provides support for HTML5 features such as offline storage, canvas, audio, and video, although it's possible to use any HTML5 features whether GWT provides specific Java classes to support them or not (I implemented the offline storage feature in one of my apps before it was part of GWT). Using GWT will mitigate many of the browser compatibility problems you will encounter with straight HTML+CSS+JS. Although you write in Java, it's still important to be familiar with HTML, CSS and JS, since the java is compiled to js.
