preferred applications are focused into active workspace

[Peter Smerdon]

Hello, I *think* this is an xfce4 issue, apologies if not...
when I have emacs running in workspace 1, and the server mode is
enabled, if I am viewing a file with `less' in a terminal on workspace
2, hitting `v' will send the file to my running emacs to be edited,
quite handy except that my emacs window is now moved from work space one
to workspace two.

Similarly, the terminal I use (rxvt-unicode) has the ability to mark
url's by underlining them, when I click on one it opens the url in a new
tab in my already running firefox, but again, if firefox was running in
workspace four, and I click on a url in my terminal in workspace two,
firefox is now moved over to workspace two.

I would like for these applications to stay where they are in such
cases, is this possible?

thanks!
-- 

Peter.