John,

AngularJs is a JavaScript framework. It provides two-way databinding, form validation, http services and application services like dependency injection, modules etc. to make it easier to build modular JavaScript applications. Since you have a WPF background you'll probably find a lot of familiar things with Angular.

For UI you need something else. Bootstrap CSS provides a decent base library for doing common forms based applications. It has a pleasing base layout, which is meant to be customized. Customization is not necessarily easy (lots of things that have to be adjusted even for simple things) but it's still better than rolling your own or using a truly fixed framework.

If you want to look at an example, I have one in the West Wind Toolkit which is my .NET set of tools. It comes with an AlbumViewer sample application that uses Angular, customized bootstrap and MVC to build a SPA application.

West Wind Toolkit:
https://github.com/RickStrahl/WestwindToolkit

Album Viewer Sample:
https://github.com/RickStrahl/WestwindToolkit/tree/master/Samples/AlbumViewer

The front end is just pure JavaScript/CSS - the backend is MVC using using the EF business class layer included with the Toolkit.

+++ Rick ---

>>Hi John,
>>
>>Not trying to dissuade you, but... here are some thoughts I based on the discussion at this point.
>>
>>If you're starting from scratch is there any reason you're starting with older technologies? If I were starting today I'd probably go the Bootstrap, AngularJs route rather than anything with jQuery UI. There are lots of issues with jQuery UI (no decent mobile support, clunky component api, very bulky for what you get) that make it a questionable choice for anything but specifically focused applications that fit its narrow use case (basically form centric desktop browser apps).
>>
>>Also - given going forward in ASP.NET vNext that bundling will go away I would skip that whole ball of wax and go either with manually embedding scripts and links (and letting Web Essentials do minification) and or using a client side tool-chain using Grunt/gulp to handle the bundling/packaging tasks if even desired. Again - mainly because that stuff is going away in future versions of .NET and the focus goes to using the 'native' Javascript tooling.
>>
>>Also - on a side note, it's not the best way to use NuGets for client side libraries. Most of the NuGet *client* packages tend to be out of date and again that's getting phased out for JavaScript libraries and content. In the future, the goal for NuGet is to *only* distribute .NET binaries plus possibly some configuration data. The rest is intended to be delivered via other tools like Bower (which is a client side component manager for JavaScript libraries).
>>
>>FWIW, I've never been a fan by any of the pre-packaged templates that VIsual Studio provides. They are incredibly bloated and include tons of stuff that has to be ripped out usually and that end up complicating things you actually need to do. It's often much easier to start clean and follow the recommended setup of the actual client libraries and build from there rather than through the ASP.NET stock templates.
>>
>>I realize this sounds overwhelming - heck it is, but I'd be very wary to go with jQuery UI for any production work at this point. Starting small and working with the original JavaScript libraries is the key IMHO and avoiding the cluster that ASP.NET's initial templates provide.
>>
>>My 2 cents. Take with grain of salt of personal bias :-)
>>
>>+++ Rick ---
>>
>
>No, I value your opinion. I asked around and here, what technologies I should use to build this app... I was told Bootstrap and MVC... I thought jQuery was the tool du jour for this stuff. I will look at angular instead of jquery. Is there an angular UI?