Yep, Gmail's interactivity with its keyboard shortcuts, navigation, settings, chat application and etc is extremely impresive. What's even more amazing is that most of this stuff is all done on one page cross-browser. This is the kind of application I'm talking about. What tools do you use to keep the complexity of such an app under control?

It's interesting, because as well made as gmail is, I simply can't bring myself to think of it as a good UI. I just don't find the interface particularly usable.

I spend ages looking through the buttons trying to remember where the one is for creating a new message. It seems arbitrary what's a button and what's a link. Grouping of 'concepts' seem utterly arbitrary (notably the list of choices presented in the dropdown next to 'reply' in a message chain).

I just don't think I've ever been hugely impressed with googles UI credentials - everyone always seems to put them up as some kinds of genius in terms of usability but I just don't see it.

Ok, google maps is a notable exception.

Thank you. It doesn't even have a preview pane. And almost everything about it is as unintuitive as humanly possible. I have the same problem with composing new messages, and emptying spam folder.

I've never understood the idea behind the "preview pane", all you do with email is read it, so what does a preview do other than show you the message? And how is that any different from simply reading the email? Then again I've never been a power email user so maybe I just don't "get" it.

Try turning on the keyboard shortcuts and learning them. I can't imagine wasting time hunting for 'c'ompose, or 'C'ompose for a new window. Some are a little odd ('#' for delete and 'e' for archive), but I think there's a Lab you can turn on to tweak them. I am not even aware of where buttons or links for doing anything are anymore.

Yup, there is a labs item to customize your shortcuts. I couldn't use Gmail without them, for the most part. It's not a great visual UI, but the workflows behind it are amazing. It's kinda like emacs in that aspect, I suppose...

OK, the drop-down next to the reply button and that button itself are a bit wonky, but I never use them. I think the grouping of the other elements is one of the nicer aspects of Gmail.

Buttons represent actions. Clicking a button mutates the world. Links represent places and views. Clicking a link takes you somewhere or changes the appearance of something.

Links along the left are global. Buttons along the top and bottom of the center panel pertain to the current conversation or selection of conversations (depending on view). Links and buttons on each message operate on, oddly enough, that message.

Maybe Google's general style doesn't meld well with the way you think, but for many (most?) people, it does. It's a fantastic design.

I found Google Wave to be somewhat impressive. It uses GWT.

There's a presentation about it's implementation using GWT here (I haven't watched it): http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/GoogleWavePow...

You think google wave has good UI? My reasonably technology literate girlfriend couldn't figure out how to do anything, or the actions she did discover were too complicated or unintuitive (why does pressing enter not send a message?). She gave up after 5 minutes.

The front end technology is definitely cool, but the UI sucks.

It's impressive technically but it's a terrible UI.

it will probably be customizable not too long from now; i'd like a chance to test it out, see if it's good for organizing your thoughts; what does it look like on a mobile device?

+1 for Gmail and google.com itself

If im not mistaken gmail's interface is written in GWT.

You are mistaken. Gmail greatly predates GWT.

Though I remember reading somewhere they rewrote the entire thing with GWT. Can someone find source or tell me if I'm wrong?

Around GWT's 1.5 release I heard the GWT team was trying to get the gmail developers to switch from pure js. I don't believe they had any luck though =)