As I understand it Firefox doesn't have a stand alone email service you would need Thunderbird for that. I have a googlemail account as wellas one with ntlworld and downloaded the Google add-on to deal with all my emails

Re Tabs ---- I'm not sure what it is you don't like. I open a new folder on the taskbar for each catagory of website I want quick access to. eg. 'News' , 'Forum(s)', 'Sheet music' etc. Then when I'm searching for something I can have them all available with just one click of the mouse.