Wait, firefox can't auto reload without a PLUGIN? o_o
and you need a plugin to hide it? You can make opera show up as anything from safari to firefox or IE if you want to lol
o_o
you can also right click ANY searchbox and make a custom searchbox, RSS and IRC chat built in, lots of skins, the ablity to drag links into the toolbar...

BlockSite - stops sites and links from loading and even showing.
Define: Highlight a word, and have google's define: function tell you what it is.
Personas: Minimal skinning (just a background for the menu/toolbar/statusbar)
Stylish: Re-skin websites that have awful/bad designs.
TAB-mix-Plus: Greater control over how tabs operate.

I've been a Firefox user for a while but recently he thing has been playing up on me. Whenever I load a page that I'm viewing it freezes for about 20 secs and I cant do anything until the page that is loading has loaded up. I haven't a clue what is causing the problem and I've done everything up to doing a clean reinstall of Firefox and nothing seems to fix it.
I've tried Safari, found that to be BLEH!!!
Now I'm using Opera, only 2 things are bugging me.
1 - I didn't realize how many ads there is all over the place, lol. I haven't found anything similar to Firefox's Ad-blocker for Opera.
2 - Small nagging little problem. Every time I open a new tab I automatically jump to viewing that tab. If I'm on a forum I usually end up opening all interesting topics in a new tab in one go, then read/respond to each topic one after the other. This jumping to each tab when opened and moving back to the original tab is bugging me.
Any advice on how to fix those 2 would be awesome :D.

I too am a Firefox user but I have nothing against Opera. I used to use Opera and liked it but for some reason Firefox just felt nicer. After changing the theme to a darker version ofcourse,
As for Firefox add ons there is one that I'm surprised hasn't been said yet:
1.FlashGot. When downloading bigger files like GoG games, a download manager is a must. Flashget is one of the best and with Flashgot you can get it integrated into Firefox. It has it's uses. You can also download media and parts of websites easily with it. You should try it.

Ubiquity. If you're familiar with utilities like Launchy or Enso, it's basically like that.
Easy access to a load of web services (google, google image search, google translate, wikipedia, flickr, imdb, gmail, amazon, ebay, digg, google calendar, google maps, youtube, tinyurl, twitter...) as well as a bunch of utilities like calculators, and text formatting commands. Even a few things that have no discernible use, like the flip-page command (see screenshot).

I only use three addons, Firebug (because CSS coding is cool), Xmarks, and Chatzilla.

My favourite addon for Firefox is Vimperator.

Firebug is one of THE most important Firefox addons, even if it's built-into every other browser out there, because FB is much more user friendly and the others lack functionality. IMO.

Yeah, except despite not doing much by default, it STILL manages to throw away that advantage that should make it quicker and instead is slower than most of the competition (IE being the still slower one).
Still, FF sits on the second place in my list (Safari being first) because of the extensive library of add-ons - were I to compare all browsers in their vanilla state FF and IE would probably share a last place.

I use both FF and Opera. While I prefer FF and generally use it, I usually have Opera open on my second monitor. I love the speed dial feature.
Anyway, for question 1, I don't know. I've not explored much for Opera for addons.
For 2: I usually right-click on the links and choose 'Open in Background Tab'.

I used to be a IE7 user, and I used IE ever since I started using the Internet. Then one day, Flash stopped working. I kept using it for a few months when I decided, fuck it, I'll just use Firefox 3 beta. And I did. And I loved it. And I'm pretty much a Firefox convert, though I use Chrome a lot now (it's very snappy). Too bad the Google devs don't believe in Chrome extensions.

Tools -> Advanced -> Blocked Content...
Add whatever you want blocked, use * as a wildcard, so if you add "http://*.google.com/*" EVERYTHING from google would be blocked.

Every single "speed test" I have seen show that the only differences between any of the browsers is the "cold start" versus "warm start" tests. Yes, Opera launches faster than all others when you start it immediately after booting your machine, but all subsequent launches of any browser, and you are breaking even (milliseconds differences).
Every other test is pretty much the same: memory usage - Firefox does it a bit better than most; Java script - Chrome does it a bit better than most; multi-tabbed load - IE does it a little bit better than most; CSS - Safari does it a little bit better than most. In the end, no one browser has ever done everything clearly better than all the others, so what it really comes down to is which one do you prefer based on what it offers you in terms of functionality, interface and the performance characteristics that actually matter to you. That doesn't mean that Safari or Opera or Firefox is actually better than any other browser, it just means that it is the one that you like.

Executing Javascript, rendering pages, rerendering the page when a javascript messes with the DOM... maybe it's just me, but Safari usually seems the fastest, then Chrome and Opera on a second place, then Firefox and lastly Explorer. "Seems" being a code word, of course, mileage usually varies by each person's personal preferences.