Comment 15 for bug 51242

I just found this one, I also blamed this on gnome-panel: Bug 572690

When launching by gnome-panel oder menu, it is solvable: The launched application's window should get focus only if gnome-panel still has. If the user decided to do something after the launch click, the launched application's window should open behind the currently focussed window. This behavior can be seen at Windows XP too for example.

Another approach could be a timed behavior: If a mouse or keyboard event occured the last x seconds, a window of an application different to the currently focussed one is opened in background. That would also cover chat- and other popup events.