Firefox and java question

[Lorin Pino]

I just got brave and installed Firefox 1.5.0.6 on breezy.  (Installing 
anything outside of synaptic is brave for me!)  I decided to also go 
ahead and install the new java package jre-1_5_08-linux-i586.bin.  I 
used the examples from the how-to's on the sites:  firefox is in /opt, 
and I created /usr/java to extract the binary java file in.  There are 
two plug-ins available in java:  ns7, or ns7-gcc.  I tried the ns7 and 
it works, but I while a looped weather map is loading my cpu is at 100% 
until the image is totally loaded.  So I switched to the ns7-gcc, but it 
caused firefox to crash, so I am assuming that I shouldn't use that 
one.  For the moment, at least, I have gone back to the old plug-in 
(1.4), and it is working normally.  Is this something that others have 
run into?  If so, is there a fix?
~Lorin