Yeah, the thing I didn't like about tabs was that they take up space from the toolbar. I like mine as small as possible, like in IE I've only the row with the icons and then the row with the url and go button...
I spent more time configuring Firefox, than I did on Firebird or Mozilla, and I like it quite a bit. Having a bit of trouble getting used to its quirks, but for browsing it does seem significantly faster than IE, which is what counts in the end when you're on 56k, like me.
I figured the reason the pages were displaying "incorrectly" (or correctly, if you will) was because of mostly IE-specific code. Thanks for confirming that, and all the other tips as well.
And at least I get image placeholders... (not the little red x's, but placeholders that "hold the place" of an image until it is loaded, like
in this screen cap.