The gesture area definitely made things fluid and easy, but unfortunately, it was absolutely not intuitive. If you haven't done (or have forgotten) the first use tutorial, it takes some luck to figure out how to navigate webOS. (I think that Clear has the same problem: swipe to mark as done/delete is not discoverable; it only works for people who already know of swipe to delete as a system gesture.)
That is true, but I'd say swiping backward is about as intuitive as the now-famous "pinch-to-zoom" gesture: once you know it, it makes sense. It just takes warming people up to the idea; a luxury Palm didn't really have.
