Looking for some direction on front end solutions

[Nate Levy]

Hi there. I'm looking for some suggestions that might lead me to a front end solution - the options seem to be endless and I'm a little overwhelmed trying to sort through everything on my own.

Here's what I'm looking for:

* I'm making a utility to help manage a bunch of data. It's essentially a library of user-defined items, a formula with a bunch of line items pulled from the library, and a ton of calculations (several hundred for each line item, recalculating often).

* I'm currently doing this in Excel and giving each user their own copy. This isn't ideal for many obvious reasons, primarily 1) it really should be a database, and 2) I don't want all users to need Excel (and "all users now need Access instead" isn't any better).

* I'm passable at programming, but I'm absolutely *awful* at making UIs. Hate making UIs. Hate hate hate.

So: if I want to move all the data to mySQL, and I'm perfectly happy to write code but am absolutely desperate for the easiest possible UI / front-end creation, what kinds of solutions should I look into that would make it relatively painless to make a vaguely spreadsheet-like UI?

I have no preference between web-based vs. distributable; either one is fine. I'd prefer free (I know, I know).

I appreciate any and all suggestions!