I know I'll get a few laughs by adding this, but you can also achieve some nifty gui's with a .swf front-end. Actionscript is pretty much Javascript in Flash 5 and you can completely separate the logic from the interface. It has been used already on some banking systems. You just need to be as careful as you would with the rest of the application. I will contend that SVG's will play a larger role in web-based interfaces than Java will(I stress interface here). You may commence your laughter.
