I think you can stop this by going into; Applications > Settings > Window Manager Tweaks Click on the 'Focus' tab and check the box to 'Activate focus stealing prevention'. Hope this works for you, <div class="gmail_quote">2009/5/12 Michele Mor <<a href="mailto:m_mor@mail15.com">m_mor@mail15.com</a>> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div>Hi. Since I have an old laptop, I usually launch Firefox and start browsing. Then I launch Openoffice and go back to FF to keep browsing. The annoying thing is that suddenly Openoffice jump into focus and I have to click again on FF. Note that the opposite is true. I open OO, start writing, then launch FF. I keep writing in OO and suddenly I find myself writing in FF!! Is it possible to change the behaviour of applications and force them to stay in the background, until specifically selected by the user? Hope my explanation is clear. Thanks. Michele </div> -- xubuntu-users mailing list <a href="mailto:xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com">xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-users" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-users</a> </blockquote></div>