I am starting to HATE Firefox

So much so that I just typed 'Direfox'....     I have for some time been without access to YouTube (or any comparable video streams).   I had been assuming that this was related to my other problems of Net access: very poor connection, heavy government censorship, being obliged to use slow and unreliable Tor as my proxy.   But now.... censorship seems much relaxed (many sites formerly blocked now open again to unproxied Explorer; very little interference with searches; almost all sites loading fine through Tor); my connection speed is much, much faster at my new apartment; and Tor is performing smoothly, stably, and not too slowly (most of the time).   But still no YouTube.   So, I started paying attention to the error message YouTube was giving me: Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player. I have the latest Flash player.  But I decided to uninstall it and reinstall it, just to be on the safe side. In doing so, I discovered that although I did have Flash installed on my computer, I somehow did not have it installed as a plug-in for Firefox.  (Why does Flash not come as a standard add-on with Firefox??  Surely it used to??  I've been using Firefox for two years or more now, and never had any problem with video streaming until recently.  I don't recall having to go through this rigmarole to make the browser video compatible before.  Is it just a shortcoming of the latest version of Firefox?)   This is tricky with Firefox these days.  First you have to delve around among the sub-menus to find the screen that gives permissions to download from specified sites, in order to add Adobe (because, obviously, Adobe wouldn't be included among the original defaults, would it [despite the fact that Firefox is automatically equipped to use Acrobat Reader]?)  Even then, the download pop-up window still gets blocked, so you have to 'Allow' that as well before you can start the download.  And then you have to install Adobe Download Manager as a preliminary to installing the actual Flash program (another new one on me!).  And then you have to exit and re-launch Firefox for the installation to take effect.   And, for some reason, on my computer, it is often failing to do so.  It took me about six tries before the installation would take.   Almost as much vexation with the Java side of the possible problem: again, Java activation is suddenly non-standard?!  No.  You have to go through the Tools>Options>Main>Manage Add-ons>Plugins ritual to discover.... that Java is in fact disabled.  You attempt to enable it, but the dialog box is being glitchy and won't accept the click at first.  Then it gets inconsistent about whether you need to relaunch Firefox again: at first it says yes, then apparently there's no need after all.  I relaunch anyway, to be on the safe side.   And, having gone through this whole process five or six times now (with successive faltering attempts to install the Flash plug-in properly), I have found that a couple of times Java has spontaneously disabled itself.   This is a particularly troubling set of glitches and gremlins I am dealing with here.     And you know what?  Now, at last, both Flash and Java are displayed as installed and enabled in the Firefox 'Plugins' menu.  And YouTube still doesn't work.   I am at my wit's end.  I hate f***ing Firefox!!!    Help, anyone????

Update: It appears that the problem is with Java, which somehow becomes disabled (still displayed in the list of 'enabled' plugins, but ceases to work; and 'Java Console' disappears from the Tools menu) whenever I enable Torbutton to use my proxy. I have left a query on the Mozilla support forum, but have had no responses yet. Any ideas, anyone??