Boy, Do I Feel Dumb! How Do I Install Firefox?

Newbie **** here. My shiny new Power Mac G5 arrived today, and I finally got it set up and running. I have been a life long Windows (and lately Linux) user who has finally taken the leap to Mac. I decided to install Firefox, so I used Safari to surf over to the Firefox site, and downloaded the file. So far, so good. Now what? I really feel like a fish out of water in this new world of Mac OS X. How do I install this thing now?

I have a Firefox-1.5.0.3.dmg file on my desktop. If I double click it, I get an icon that looks like a drive with the Firefox logo on it. If I double click it, I get a little window with a picture that looks like Firefox going to a folder. If I double click the Firefox portion of that picture (no other part of that picture seems "live"), Firefox runs. BUT, it is not installed. It seems to be running out of this virtual Firefox disk on my desktop. It does not install into Applications.

As dumb as it sounds, how do I actually *install* this app into Appliations? Or am I taking the wrong view of it for the Mac world? Am I supposed to be doing something else? Since this is the first Mac app I have EVER tried to install, I have no clue what the paradigm is. Please help!!! Thanks.

EDIT: oh and one more thing? Where does Firefox keep its working files? You know, its bookmarks, history and the like. In Linux, these are kept in your home folder, in a subfolder called ".mozilla". That doesn't seem to be the case on the Mac. With Firefox running, I can't find these files! Thanks again.

drag and drop your firefox application that you are double clicking to open into your applications folder.

once you do that it is installed
-chris

That easy, huh? Wow, that *is* pretty neat. Can you help with the later EDIT question on where the working files (history, bookmarks, etc.) are kept? I want to replace the default ones with ones I transfer over from my Windows environment. Thanks!

i forget where everything should be but it is just going to be some preference files here and there within your library.

when you 'install' firefox it is basically copy/pasting it to your applications and the whole thing is technically self contained after that (very basic not 100% correct description)

to find your stuff you can do a spotlight search, magnifying glass in blue circle at top of screen or hit command+space to open the search bar (command is the apple key)

i have no clue about transporting bookmarks etc.
-chris

coach_z, thanks for all the help! Much appreciated. Clearly, this is going to be a heck of a learning curve! I have "Mac OS X Tiger Edition, The Missing Manual" by O'Reilly press. I guess I had better get reading! Thanks again. This is being posted from my INSTALLED :dive: Firefox.

no problem! check out the user reputation thread and drop some rep!

why you using firefox? i like safari a lot and it does a lot of things

mac57 said:

Can you help with the later EDIT question on where the working files (history, bookmarks, etc.) are kept? I want to replace the default ones with ones I transfer over from my Windows environment. Thanks!

Click to expand...

Look in your user folder in /Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.
As far as bookmarks...save them as an HTML file, put it on your mac, and import into Firefox.

Whenever I've installed Firefox on a machine the first thing it asks is if you would like to import bookmarks from the previous browser.

Thanks for all the help everyone. I now have Firefox up and running just as desired - Thunderbird too.

I agree that Safari looks interesting, and I am actively experimenting with it. However, I have a HUGE set of bookmarks on Firefox, and I figured I would have to get them over to the Mac intact before I could ask Safari to import them. Else, I would lose them all. So, now that I have them over on the Mac, if I find that I like Safari better, I will import them all into Safari and carry on!

Thanks again everyone.

safari is a fine browser, but i prefer firefox as well. i like firefox's handling of tabs and the ability to add search engines to the search bar. and i like having rss feeds as live bookmarks, which i'm not sure you can do in safari.