This is a fairly simple suggestion:

Make the fences able to come to the foreground, on top of other windows, when clicked or hovered, so that if you have a window over it, you can hover or click on the fence, and run a program from inside that fence.  An option for this to work, or to select between hover and click, could also work pretty well.  

To me, it seems to be the next logical step in development towards a more user friendly experience, allowing people to select icons without minimizing/closing other windows, especially with desktop resolutions getting large and there not being a need to maximize things like browsers, explorer windows, etc nearly as much anymore.

Thanks for your consideration