I love learning and sharing tips that make my day more productive. Often times, it's the simplest ones I find the most useful.
If you're like me, you spend a significant portion of your day interacting on the Gmail web interface. However, one of my biggest pet peeves in Gmail is that when composing a new message I lose access to the rest of my mailbox, since it takes up the entire window.
Alas, I discovered the key! By simply by holding down the SHIFT key when clicking COMPOSE MAIL, a pop-up window appears, and access to the full mailbox is retained.