When I open any modular window like the open or save dialogs in abiword 2.4.2, abiword's entry in the taskbar flashes as if its urgent hint was set. This could also be a bug in xfwm4. Or even in abiword. I'll investigate further. I use xfce from svn, revision 21626.
Hmm, maybe it has something to do with xfwm focus prevention. Do you have that enabled?
No, I don't. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to investigate it more, but when I get time I'll try it out in another desktop environment/window manager.
I'm unable to reproduce this on a current release of Abiword/Xfwm... Closing it as 'worksforme'...