I had a really bad experience installing Firefox on my Mac so I decided to pen down the detailed instructions along with my experience installing it as a first time Mac user.
Installing Firefox on Mac OS X
Goto Firefox.com, click on the download link and the file should download to your Downloads folder
Open the Downloads folder using Finder and locate the Firefox.2.x.x.x file, double click on it ad you should see this screen
Click accept and in a few moments, the image will be mounted and you will see this window
Now open the Applications folder in another Finder window and drag the Firefox icon from the above screen into the Applications folder
You will see a progress screen for a few moments and you are done installing Firefox
Right click on the Firefox disc image icon on your desktop and Eject
To launch Firefox, double click on the Firefox icon in the Applications folder
For future use, you could drag the Firefox icon from the Applications window onto the dock to create a shortcut
My experience
Installing applications is supposedly a trivial task on a Mac but when I tried to install Firefox (my first non-Apple application) I was clue less about how to install it.
It was my Day 1 with the Mac and I already got the hang of Safari so I decided to try the mighty Firefox for a few reasons -
- First its a damn good browser
- Second I was used to it as a windows user
- Third and most important, Firefox maintains a consistent UI across all platforms
Just like everyone else I downloaded the DMG, double clicked on the DMG and it showed me this screen.
What the heck??? What am I supposed to do with this little window?? What does it mean? I was really frustrated, why can’t they include instructions to install the app? I initially thought it was actually a splash screen. Then after playing with the window for a while, I discovered that the Firefox logo is an icon and by the signs I thought I should drag this icon into the white Applications icon in the window. Didn’t work. Tried some googling with no luck then realized that I could drag the icon into a new Applications finder window. And finally there I had it, Firefox on my Mac.
This was in the past and when I was a Mac noob. Now that I know how to install applications (apps), when I think about my first install experience I feel embarrassed. And I wish Firefox developers designed it in such a way that the Firefox icon could be dragged into the Applications icon in the same disk image window rather than the user opening a new Applications window and then dragging the icon into it.
It was actually my mistake, they had install instructions on the download page which I did not notice and closed.