Comment 31 for bug 346840

Well. Just to add confusion to the whole mess, now Pidgin (which is 2.5.5 on my system) has gone back to its annoying behaviour.

My solution was a radical rethinking of what I use the taskbar for. I mostly just use it so I'll know if gmail has a new email for me. I never select applications with it using mouse. I always use Alt-Tab. So like Jerry above, I just removed it from the GNOME panel and stopped using it entirely. If it's going to be a battleground for applications to insist on giving me information I don't want or need, then why should I subject myself to it?

Incidentally, the "fix" Jerry suggests, adding skip taskbar settings for Pidgin has a nasty side-effect (in Compiz, at least): You can no longer Alt-Tab to the buddy list, therefore can no longer use the arrow keys to select a buddy, then "enter" to start an IM conversation with that buddy.

Not a usable workaround if you're a keyboard-oriented user.