Painful Conflict Between Safari 3.1 and Gmail (UI 1)

With the new release of Apple's Safari 3.1, it has become clear there is a conflict between it and Gmail for folks using version 1 of Gmail (which includes most Google Apps and some localized accounts). When trying to type in the rich text fields, the modifier keys cause the focus to change. Trying to type a capital "I" by pressing shift will cause the focus to leave the rich text field without every typing the "I".

To say this is annoying is a major understatement. It is maddening,

Workaround:
If you can, switch to the "new" version 2 Gmail. If the new version is not available, you might be able to switch from "rich text" to "plain text" to avoid the problem.

This has been a known issue through the development of Webkit, so I'm not sure how Apple and Google could have let this very annoying problem happen. Hopefully, they will get it fixed ASAP.