Let's say I have applications A and B running, with windows A1, A2, B1, B2. On Windows, I can switch to B1, then A1, and see the two side by side. On Mac (Snow Leopard), when I switch to A1, it also brings A2 to the front - frequently obscuring B1.
This is pretty annoying: often I'm trying to do something like enter shell commands while reading off a web page - but all the other shell windows also come to the front, so I can't see the web page.
Is there any way to change this?