Firefox without Flash does OK for me now, for the rest of the stuff that needs javascript and images. I doubt it will be possible to tune it properly (short of hosts file munging) if all Flash migrates to HTML5.
And of course it's a bit unwieldy to keep multiple browsers around - Konqueror 3.x also shows me a convenient 'open link in Firefox' option, but that's it. And I don't think this kind of fiddly options will be exactly first priority.
We'll see in a couple of years, I guess.
P.S.
The 'canvas' animation in the page linked here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1252899 pegs one core of my Linux machine with Firefox 3.5.
I just tested, and it does the same with image loading turned off. Must also turn off javascript to make it stop (duh, must be a js busy-wait doing it).
(I seem to recall a line about 'depending on the kindness of strangers', not really an enviable situation.)