Ha, got the popup comment to work with IE9. It has to do with where on the save button I click. If long clicked at the bottom edge of the save button, it works every time. If clicked quickly or anywhere else on the save button, it doesn't take.
In Firefox the popup comment seems to work just fine, even though it didn't last night
However, using the edit button does NOT return me to the relevant page after save - goes back to page 1 of list in both IE9 and Firefox