I use the bookmark tool bar that is part of firefox. At the top you have the 3 bars above where your tabs are, the one with file, view etc, then you have the middle one and then the bottom one that bottom one is the bookmarks toolbar and you can create a folder there on that bar and store your daily used bookmarks in there, I have mine set up with several folders like forums, mail, music etc and in each folder I have my associated sites, if you just have a few sites you want to use then you can do that with out making folders, When you are at a site you want to use, use your cursor on the address bar and grab the little icon of that web address that is at the right end and drag it onto the bookmarks toolbar, then it will become a link you can click on. to create the folders on that bar just right click on the bookmarks toolbar and choose new folder, then you can change the name to what ever you want. To put a site into that folder go to the website then right click on that folder and choose add bookmark here. If you put individual sites on your bar and want to change the name or shorten it just right click on it and choose properties and there you can change that. Here you can see how mine looks click on that a couple times to get full size. Now I only have 2 bars then my tabs I did away with my middle bar so, and moved some of the stuff that used to be on the middle bar up to my top bar, so I have that and then below that I have the bookmarks bar with my folders and fave sites there. see if that would help you out

Funny I had a similar problem this week ended up reinstalling it. I think it may have been an add/on issue. If you click start> Programs now look for the Mozilla Firefox Icon left click on it once you will see the option for (Safe Mode) you could try doubling clicking the safe mode option and see if firefox connections work better. Running in the Safe Mode, not to be confused with Windows Safe Mode disables the add/ons in Firefox. Good luck and let us know.

I have never seen a firefox add-on called that, I did a search on firefox extensions page and nothing with realplayer in the name even came up. That is a new one on me. You can always try getting Real Player again should you find you need it. Or you can get something like Real Alternative which will play Real stuff and is light and easy. Download Real Alternative RealPlayer as stated by MozillaZine you have 2 alternatives for Real media. since you gave me the exact name I googled it and sure enough it apparently does appear for some people and it looks like it is causing a lot of problems and it can be disabled here are the results Here is a link that might be useful: search result

well you have to download it to your pc, then close all of your browser windows completely shutting down all instances of firefox, then go to the download and double click to begin the install, follow wizard. to see the plugins you have in your firefox browser open a firefox browser window, in the url box type about:plugins and hit enter, it will give you a list of all current plugins and their state. A really good free little program by Secunia will tell you if any of the programs and such are up to date or if there are newer versions, it is very helpful to keep things updated. Here is a link that might be useful: secunia personal software inspector