There is a new version that completely replaces the sound engine with a flash based player. This means that there are no more embedded objects except for music, thus no long loading time.
1) It actually worked better in Firefox for me, because for some reason IE makes the stat fields have little arrow push buttons in them that are clearly not supposed to be there. Also the sound was much quieter, which is weird.
I haven't noticed the quieter sounds issue, but the new version removes the scroll bars from the textareas in IE.
3) You should really do something about the end. I realize there's going to be more, but at the end of your little demo, something should still happen other than crazy bugged-out transportation to the start of the map.
I should have mentioned that this isn't even really a demo, just a link to the current version in progress. There will be bugs and the rest as work continues.
4) Make sure not to show any items that can't be picked up, such as the potions and the shard in the first room.
I am thinking of having potions and shards in as random findings when you move to a new screen, except they give +5% instead of +%1 or whatever they did originally.
it's nice, but you really should make it work good in browsers that respect the web standards instead of ie ;-P
Opera will never be supported, it really isn't worth trying it in anything but Mozilla/IE. To open doors, just hit north and it will go through with a door open sound. I will revisit the N/S/E/W input.
Thanks for the input so far, I will try to map out more of the first level soon. There will also be some kind of 'search' button that will find hidden doors like the one that leads to the armor in the acid pool.