[ale] System behavior on embedded links

[skotchman at gmail.com (Scott Castaline)]

What function or configuration parameter dictates the systems behavior 
when you click on an embedded web page link in an email message. I'm 
trying to get back a behavior where when I click on a link in an email 
that points to say www.ale.org it causes Firefox to open with that tab 
active. Right now it'll stay minimized with Thunderbird still the focus 
and the tab for FF will be flashing. I have to click on it to change the 
focus to FF. The link will open a new tab but does not change the system 
focus. I have searched through both apps preferences as well as their 
advanced config files and cannot see anything obvious that would seem to 
do this.
I currently have Fedora 13, Firefox 3.6.3, Thunderbird 3.0.4 and Gnome 
for my desktop. Under Fedora 12 when I clicked on such link it would 
cause the Firefox window to pop up and a new tab opened with the 
requested site or launch Firefox if not already running. That is what I 
want to happen now. Sorry for being long winded, but I'm not sure how 
else to describe what I wanted.

TIA
Scott C.