Dialog-windows don't get focus - irritating!

[Eric Feliksik]

I'm running an up-to-this-date hoary, and for a while already I see that 
when I try to close some apps, the appearing dialog window has no focus.

Examples of programs where this happens are firefox (have multiple tabs 
open and close with x or alt-f4), gedit (have an unsaved document and 
try to close) and OpenOffice (try to close an unsaved document in oowriter).

I installed Ubuntu at my girlfriends computer this week, and at here 
place it was the same. (Except that after updating openoffice that 
program would not start anymore - but that's another topic. Maybe more 
on that later).

Anybody else sees this? I hope this focus-problem can be recognised and 
solved.

Thanks,

Eric