Is there anything special in the way of configuration that is required to enable a CentOS box to act as the point of origin for an http request routed to it via a SOCKS ssh link?

I have researched this matter and the recommended procedure is to open an SSH connection to the desired host passing the requisite switches so:

ssh -f -n -D <port> user@host.domain.tld

And then reconfigure the desired applications to use the localhost:<port> as the SOCKS proxy.

However, I cannot seem to get this to work with my CentOS based desktop to which I am trying to connect through a public wireless network. I connect to the desktop via terminal (on OSX-10.6.8 fine), but setting the browser, Firefox-3.6.23, advanced network config to use localhost:<port> as a SOCKSv5 proxy for http simply results in the browser failing to show anything. I do not get any error, I just get a blank page for whatever url I try.

I have tried this with and without the iptables service running on the target and achieved the same results. Therefore I do not consider the firewall configuration on the target to be the immediate problem.

Has anyone here tried to do this and succeeded?

Supplemental question: How does one route an https connection to a non-standard port via SOCKS? How does one configure a browser to do this?