The problem may have coincided with 18.0.1 update? But something just happened which was not at all noticeable in recent versions.
I do a lot of work in Yahoo mail and suddenly working with drafts I notice sluggish keyboard response while I'm composing. Backspace is noticeably slow, and generally working in body of text sluggish. Even the text that I type seems at times to appear at the cursor sluggishly within Yahoo. I'm working in rich text of course.
Don't notice this behavior yet anywhere else. Drives me nuts.
I suggest getting the latest version which is 18.0.2 and seeing how that reacts. Also, in my opinion, it is good to back up, completely uninstall and then install a new version...but that is just me.
There's a similar discussion about Seamonkey, which is mostly Firefox code, at Mozillazine Forum. The reporter found Firefox 18 to be sluggish, also. Disabling hardware acceleration appears to make a difference.