There are two things going on here:<BR>1) Safari uses lower-level text drawing to improve speed. It's one of the fastest-scrolling apps on OS X.<BR>2) FireFox redraws the whole window when you scroll.
Your MacBook comes with natural scrolling by default. This means when your fingers go upwards in the trackpad, the page scrolls downwards, and vice versa. This could be a big change, especially when ...