Earlier today, in the space of 5 minutes, I experienced three times windows opening immediately over the mouse cursor as I was about to press the button. Once, I clicked on the wrong window, twice I came very close. This is a very danger problem. I have lost data before because of this same problem. This is in fact similar to the problem of new windows stealing keyboard focus. And that frequently results in passwords being entered in windows they should not be entered in.
I am not sure what the solution preferred by usability experts is, if there is one. The obvious approach would be to open new windows in the background, but usually users want new windows in front. Perhaps what is needed is some guess as to whether a window is being used (e.g. key press or mouse click within the last so many milliseconds); if it is, the system will open the new window behind it if it would block the old window. Also, it could be useful for programs who do not usually need to be on top to open in the background, though which is preferred can be hard to determine for some types of programs (e.g. IM clients).
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