Sorry if you think I'm thread crapping, it's simply the truth though. "Useful information" as to why your links bar sorts and has no option not to is that M$ spent 2 minutes designing it since they had no competition. Spending more time would have meant spending more money, and why bother when you've got a monopoly? Did you give FF a real try, or just use it for 2 minutes and mistake unfamiliarity with it for not liking it? If the latter, give it a week. If the former, then perhaps try Opera. If all else fails, wait on it - Firefox is gaining ground, and I'm sure M$ has noticed. They may revamp IE at some point sooner due to this, rather than waiting until Longhorn.
For extremely small text, try holding down ctrl and using your mouse's scroll wheel. For your other Firefox problems... Not really sure, do you have the latest version installed? I'm having no problem pulling up weather.com, ups.com, fedex.com... The only things I've found Firefox not to work with are web-based windows updates and trendmicro.com's Housecall program (online virus scanner). Perhaps you tried an outdated or corrupted install.