GMail's plain-HTML mode is great

Well it's not as luxurious as GMail in JavaScript mode, but what's cool about GMail's HTML mode is that it brings GMail to older browsers and unsupported browsers (like Pocket IE on my PDA!). And it's not too shabby! I'd say it retains 75% of the power of true GMail.

This is a great example of "graceful degradation" -- under sub-optimal conditions, the app still works, to a limited extent. It is still useful. That is a beautiful thing to see.