Agreed. But I for one, can't stand it. I don't like composing emails on top of other things in the background. I find it jarring. For similar reasons, I also don't like the reply mode where you are editing within a conversation.

I guess I like viewing messages in the context of a conversation, but not composing them that way. I just wish that I had the option of composing things separately.

C'est la vie.

Have you given the 'd' keyboard shortcut a go?

Ah.. Thank you so much... Now to figure out how to adjust my user scripts to trigger that from the Compose button too...