few more questions this one is about the dock

so, i've downloaded firefox, installed it and its on my dock but when i quit firefox the icon leaves the dock how do i get it to stay on my dock permanently?

also after installing it i have an icon on my desktop, which is the symbol you get when you insert a usb drive,and it says firefox underneath, when i trashed it i could no longer open firefox. how do i get the symbol off my desktop without uninstlling firefox it won't let me drag and drop into a file it just makes a copy of it.

Just drag it to the dock. You can right click and select keep in dock and it will stay there until you choose otherwise.

thanks, then once i've asked it to stay in dock i can trash the ones on the desktop.

Not sure on that. Try it....you can always reclaim them from the trash if that dosn't work

Sounds like it wasn't installed properly. Check the process here which comes from this helpful little thread.

You have not installed it yet. You only have it on the computer and it is only in the dock while it is running. I was a little confused also the first couple of times I installed software since many apps, unlike under windows, allow you to open and run them without actually installing it to the system.

This is the procedure you will use to install most software that downloads as a .dmg file.
What you now see with firefox, when you open the .dmg file it will place a hard drive icon with it's name on your desktop. When you click on the hard drive icon it opens another box on your screen. Like you see with firefox, inside will be an icon for the software and an arrow pointing to a folder with an A on it. This is letting you know to drag and drop the firefox icon to your applications folder to install it.
At this point open Finder if it is not already open(double click on Macintosh HD)
On the left side you will see the Applications folder
Just drag the firefox icon and drop it there
Now firefox is installed and you can close and delete all the firefox files on your desktop. The ones that look like hard drives, you will right click (or control click) and "eject". They will then disappear.

Now to add fire fox to the dock - you do still have the finder window open - if not open it again
Highlight Applications on the left side - find firefox on the right side - grab firefox and drag 'n drop it on the left side of the dock. It will now stay there all the time. Now you can close finder.

Maybe a holdover from my windows side - I like to keep the original file of anything I install on my machine. If you want to do this, you can create a folder anywhere to move the original .dmg file. I just made a folder on the desktop called downloads and keep all of them in there. Gives me a good record also of what I've done to the machine since I brought it home also.

Bobtomay...I suddenly feel stupid...why didn't I think of that.

thanks guys. i think i will do the original dmg. file logging too.