Firefox runs like ass on OS X.

More extensions just make it more sluggish and bloated.

And no, it wouldn't be 'far easier' to move all of your bookmarks, cookies, and saved passwords to Firefox from Safari.

Perhaps as a one-trick pony Firefox would do the job (DownThemAll, VideoDownloader), but for daily browsing it's far too sluggish to use.

Firefox works like a champ for me, with several useful extensions installed [Google Browser Sync, Tab Mix Plus, a few others]. The benefits, for me, outweigh the extra few seconds it takes to render a web page, but I admit it seems a bit slower than Safari.

Runs like ass unless you are on a fast connection and tweak network pipelining and max connections, google for instructions.

It runs fine for me, and the supported and well-implemented ability to skip Flash and animated gifs makes it a far better experience.

The ability to control Javascript easily with it off by default makes it a safer experience that is rich when needed.

The problem you are having is YOUR problem, not everyone's.

Is Firefox a bloated warthog? I think so. Does Flash cause it to crash a lot? For me it does. Does it work better than Safari and give a better experience? For me it does.

YMMV, narf.

Unless I'm missing something fairly major here, wouldn't it be much easier to simply option-click all the links you want to download directly from the page itself?
(I thought this was a fairly well-known shortcut, but perhaps it deserves a hint of its own?)

javascript:WN7z=open('','Z6','width=400,height=200,scrollbars,resizable,menubar');
DL5e=document.links;
with(WN7z.document){
write('<base%20target=_blank>');
for(lKi=0;lKi<DL5e.length;lKi++){
write(DL5e[lKi].toString().link(DL5e[lKi])+'<br><br>')
};
void(close())
}