Things are improving rapidly, depending on the scale you intend to build to mature solutions are available for you.
As it stands I don't see a better view layer solution then React, but I think you'd be best served learning it without using JSX so you can see exactly what it does. JSX tricks some people into thinking React is some sort of markup processor.
The older generation view solutions are usually string based templates with embedded DSLs to manipulate the resulting DOM. React divorces itself from the DOM totally and allows you to programatically generate and compose the view.
Components and the separation from the DOM are React's great features.
Both Ember and Angular are trying to figure out how to integrate the React functional feel into their new versions and are taking notes. I just don't see them improving on React though at best they will copy.
I'm using React on a toy project and I'm pretty impressed with it so far. Once I got a reasonable environment for editing and processing JSX things have progressed pretty smoothly. Until web components hit this seems like the best option. The library mentioned in the OP seems interesting but I think I'd prefer to stick with React even if only for the much more established community. In the long run I think consensus counts for a lot because most things can be fixed if enough people are willing to chip in to fix them.
I'm looking forward to seeing more implementations of the React ideas! I see the Virtual DOM as mostly a necessary performance hack to let developers - as you say - think of views in a more functional fashion.
React proves that if you try to make as much as possible of your application referentially transparent (or "pure" if that can be said about an UI), you avoid a lot of complexity.
As it stands I don't see a better view layer solution then React, but I think you'd be best served learning it without using JSX so you can see exactly what it does. JSX tricks some people into thinking React is some sort of markup processor.
The older generation view solutions are usually string based templates with embedded DSLs to manipulate the resulting DOM. React divorces itself from the DOM totally and allows you to programatically generate and compose the view. Components and the separation from the DOM are React's great features.
Both Ember and Angular are trying to figure out how to integrate the React functional feel into their new versions and are taking notes. I just don't see them improving on React though at best they will copy.