I've tried this out, and have been unable to reproduce the behaviour you describe.
(Stupid question time:) Are you certain that you do not have NoScript or any other utility that could be preventing JavaScript from running correctly on your browsers?
When you go to the new character creation screen, do you see each section of it separately, with the rest collapsed into a single line, or do you scroll down through all of them?
I'm in a computer lab, on an iMac. Both browsers are stock with no plugins... Unfortunately, since I've created a new character, I don't have access to the character creation page anymore.
When I was there, all the steps were visible, but past the realm selection, the text indicated that I needed to pick a realm first. There was also a graphic at the bottom that was broken that looked like it was trying to format my new character, but was not displaying the information in the boxes I'd entered.
