You still need to think about this from the user end, alot of people hate java applications as they look ugly and are resource hogs (at least the old java was, not sure about java 2)
I know i dont want more programs to be done in java, which seem slower to me.
Firefox: no, its not the end all solution, it has its own issues and in time it will be just as insecure as IE, when its hit Firefox 6, if it makes it that far. Oh, and AOL pays for it, incase you didn't know.
Microsoft & Windows: If you hate it so much, move to linux, or bsd, or anything else, stop complaning and move on.
Good starting places:
Gentoo Novell SUSE Fedora Core Apple