@thaddy - I've tried many things, as I wrote in my first message " Form2.BringToFront also fails.".It is the application.processmessages, I believe. Sorry can't test 1.8.X anymore but something along these lines got it working... I think I am very close to what I did, maybe even a mainform.sendtoback - first - too?
@dbannon - you didn't tell which OS you are using.
....
As far as I remember, playing with PopupMode and PopupParent gave no result. [...] I'm afraid that your suggestions won't succeed :(
svn checkout http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/branches/fixes_2_0
cd fixes_2_0
make CPU_TARGET=i386 LCL_PLATFORM=carbon bigide
open startlazarus.app --args "--pcp=~/.fixes_2_0"
...... Perhaps it would be good to report it to bugtracker.