large archive causes out of memory error
Have you considered working with Cameron Kaiser? I think he has already updated some of the TLS libraries for use in TenFourFox and I believe he has even added Altivec preformance enhacements. Or maybe I'm remembering wrong, because I can't seem to find his blog post about it. Either way, it shouldn't hurt to check in with him.
I'm really surprised that the user experience is just a tiny modal window stating the connection was lost. I spent so much time going through all the settings and the connection options and the documentation thinking that surely, somewhere, even if it were buried deep, there would be an option for automatic reconnection with NO user interaction. How do we upvote feature requests? I almost hesitate to call this a feature... it should be a basic function...