The issue you are referring to is all about the ordered list. I’m still waiting for FireFly to support ordered, limited sql queries, which will enable me to populate the song list correctly without having to wait for the complete playlist to download.
It’s really a design road I’ve chosen, to minimize the waiting. The behaviour is the same with the library, it does not populate the song list until you have chosen an artist.
You can “override” by selecting all artists. Be prepared for long download waiting though.
The playlist generation is a really dirty hack. Cut’n’paste the XSPF-text into a new text document and name the document “playlist.xspf”. Any xspf-capable application (like foobar2k) will be able to stream the playlist from your server.