>Nobody writing 2D native apps deals directly with GL at all, and nobody wants to.
Who says you need to work directly with WebGL. There are and will be some wonderful 2D frameworks that wrap WebGL. Exactly what happened with Flash's Stage3D. Starling and the Feathers UI Toolkit are great in creating smooth 60fps animations effects in AS3.
I'm not aware if any production quality UI toolkits for WebGL or even Canvas despite canvas being around for many years now. The problem is that you have to reproduce a lot of what you already get using html elements and css.
Who says you need to work directly with WebGL. There are and will be some wonderful 2D frameworks that wrap WebGL. Exactly what happened with Flash's Stage3D. Starling and the Feathers UI Toolkit are great in creating smooth 60fps animations effects in AS3.