Replying to (1) -- I get the same thing. On IE, locally in my application and the fckeditor.net demo, the screen text stays current with my typing. On FireFox 1.0, both locally and in the fckeditor.net demo, my typing is about 30 characters ahead of what appears on the screen. Typing anywhere else in FireFox (such as this textarea field), is fine.
RE: IE v Firefox and custom Mailgust applicat