Two clicks are required to open e-mails from the the Gnome Notification Area.

If a user clicks on a new e-mail notification in the Gnome Notification Area, the user will have to click a second time, when another notification appears, indicating that the e-mail client is ready.

This ~may~ be an unintentional consequence of the Notifications design:  we want applications to stay out of the way of the user's current workflow, unless the user wants to interact with the application.

In this case, however, the user has already clicked on the e-mail message, indicating that he/she ~would~ like to open the e-mail client and view the message.  Therefore, the e-mail window should be placed in front of the user above other windows, as soon as the e-mail client opens.  Instead, the e-mail client opens below other windows, and generates an "is ready" notification.

In general, I think the intention is, when a user clicks on something in the notifications area, the associated action should occur without requiring additional user input.  (The only time the user should be notified is if there were an error in performing the action; for example, "Unable to open e-mail," would be a good notification to receive).

Some applications do take a wile to perform an action.  In this case, it took a few mili-seconds for my e-mail client to open.

To address this, maybe there needs to a time window?...  If the action does not complete within, for example, 250 mili-seconds, then we display a notification "<application> ready".  Otherwise, if the application completes the action within the required time frame, the application is placed at the top window for the user, without additional user input.

A simpler option may be to check if an action to open an application was initiated from the Notifications area.  If so, place the window in front of the user as soon as it is ready, and do not produce a secondary notification.