RPM packages are supposed to be handled by the RPM tool. You are not supposed to manually extract anything. The first thing you should try is to open FC's RPM front-end (something like add/remove software in the control center or so). If you have done this already and the package you want isn't in the repository, you can search for alternative repositories. If everything else fails, you download the packages you want and install them using rpm -Uvh full-package-file-name. Pay attention to the (uppercase) U, it is needed when you will update a package. You can always type man rpm or rpm --help to see more options. If you are new to this thing, I advise you to search in forums related specific to Fedora before doing this.

When you say "to install the new download because I can't get anything to extract and install the file". Is this referring to the Firefox 6.0.2 tarbal from mozilla.org or a RPM build from somewhere?

tarball from mozilla.

Open the tar.bz2 archive with a file manager and copy the files to a folder or extract the files in a terminal window to a folder.

See:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Installing_Firefox#Linux