Better window management strategies?

[Joe Smith]

How do you folks manage your working windows? I find that working on a 
standard WIMP desktop is a distracting battle of locating and arranging 
in the needed windows. The current tools, specifically in the default 
Fedora Gnome desktop are not working well for me, but maybe I've missed 
something.

Here's what I've tried:

* Focus follows mouse

I can't stand "click to focus", primarily because it's disruptive to 
move a window to the top for something simple and then to restore the 
z-order I had before.

Using "focus follows mouse" solves that problem, but I'm left with the 
converse problem: I often have problems finding the window I need and 
bringing it to the top when necessary.

Here's what I've tried for that:

1. Alt-tab to cyle through windows. This is the exact functionality I 
need, but having to access it through the keyboard, with a rather 
awkward key chord is not convenient enough. I want something that will 
work with the mouse.

2. The window-selector panel menu. Better, but it's distracting to use 
the panel here: it's too far from my working windows and it's 
complicated to locate the correct button on the panel and select the 
right window given only their titles.

3. Application window menus: these would be ok, except they don't work 
with Nautilus under "focus follows mouse" (Mozilla Seamonkey and 
OpenOffice are the two big ones I use, that don't work).

What might help:
   * a window menu built-in to the title bar
   * a method to "restore the previous order", or at least to send the 
top window down.

Other suggestions? What obvious solution have I missed?

<Joe