Annoying XP problem

OK, I love WinXP to death, but it is really annoying me with something it keeps doing. I put my taskbar on auto-hide, so I can use more of my screen. Whenever a window that does not have focus has some activity, the taskbar pops up and that program's button flashes until I put focus on it. This in itself is annoying, but it's compounded when I'm trying to do something. In mIRC it covers up the editbox, in AGN it covers up some of the textbox, and it distracts me.

Does anyone know of any way to get the stupid taskbar to quit telling me something happened in other windows?

I don't think so.
Certain programs feel the need to let you know when something happenned in their windows and you're not using said window. I don't think that there is any way to turn thatoff system wide, but individual programs might have an option to disable it for that program.
As far as I know this is more of an annoying feature in certain programs. It would be nice if there was a way to disable that system wide though.

There is a way to turn that off PIERIOD. I can't remember now, but I'll look for it. :)

The programs are doing it, not XP. I have windows flash once in awhile too.

Best bet is to shut off autohide ;). Do you really need the small amount of space that is made available by it? 800x600 resolution doesn't have the taskbar all that big (you can shrink it's size by changing to the standard Windows theme rather than using the XP theme). And don't ask about 640x480 cause XP doesn't allow that res ;).

(EDIT)Simple punctuation errors, man I'm not thinking today http://divisions.shatteredstar.com/descent3/tongue.gif.

I use a 2 line taskbar because I like having lots of windows open. it does take up a great deal of space, even with the classic theme. In the end, I think I'm going to have to revert to a one-line taskbar with no autohide. I've hunted down the "do not flash" options in all my programs, but it's a windows thing, for they still flash. Darn these little features that look so pretty but piss me off!