Well I don't know anything about the technical mumbo jumbo about it, but for the majority of stuff, faster fox can load a page faster :-\.

As for tab effect, I guess that varies, I mean obviously it's a direct copy of mac OS X's "change desktop" feature when you're running multi-desktops - but it runs well on my comp, keeps the picture all the way until you can't see it any more and the new one starts coming in, doesn't "white" anything like you're describing. It must vary from comp to comp.