I use mutt with urlview to open urls in firefox. I just got fed up with firefox stealing focus when I open a link, since I'm still in email processing mode.

The canonical answer uses about:config to alter your firefox config to:

 
	browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground = true

Well, that's great... when you like all urls loaded in the background. I like urls I clicked open in firefox to load in the background, and want urls I opened via other programs to load in the foreground.

So, let's steal focus back from firefox (that greedy pig deserves it).

 
#!/bin/sh
# call firefox and switch back to our window
#
die() { echo $* ; exit 1 ; }

window_before_firefox=$( xprop -root | 
awk '/^_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW/ { 
	if (match($0, "0x[0-9a-fA-F]+")) { 
		print substr($0, RSTART, RLENGTH) }} ')
/usr/bin/firefox $1 
[ -z "${window_before_firefox}" ] && die "we don't know who we are. great."
wmctrl -i -R ${window_before_firefox}