There are many keyboard shortcuts available for gmail. You have to enable keyboard shortcuts in the settings though. See this link: http://gizmodo.com/5995218/a-cheat-sheet-of-every-single-gma... Or enable keyboard shortcuts in gmail and press shift + '/'

Some of these keyboard shortcuts address some of the issues pointed out in the post, but I did not see any shortcuts that allow you to edit the subject in a composition window though.

I have not been terribly inconvenienced by the changes to the interface.