this is a scenario that happens to me all the time with different applications and scenarios and is starting to annoy me as it hinders workflow and i am pretty sure other users might get annoyed to it.

Example scenario

1. there is a table i need to copy from Firefox to LibreOffice Calc 

2. i switch to a empty workspace and open LibreOffice calc

3. while waiting for Calc to load i switch quickly to Firefox so i can begin 
selecting the table for copying

4. suddenly Calc appears on the wrong workspace (the one with FF not the one i "opened" Calc in) and steals focus from FF

5. now i have to send Calc to the workspace i wanted it to appear in

6. re-select what i wanted to copy paste from FF

7. paste the table into Calc and do what i wanted to do with the data

so steps 4,5 and 6 were totally unnecessary 
the problem is that there will always be applications that are heavy and/or slow computers. 

This scenario happens pretty often with different applications and with only 4gb of ram i cannot imagine keeping every application i need open all the time.

Suggestion to fix the problem : when you click on the dock or in the applications menu on a icon to open an application it already then "locks" that application to that workspace before it spawns a window so if i decide to switch to another workspace quickly for a reason or another while waiting for it to load and the application loads (or actually spawns the window) before i switch back to the right workspace it still loads into the workspace i had selected while opening it from the dock/applications menu.

i run Fedora 15 if that is related to the issue any way