Tarball installation - Newbie question

Please forgive the stupid question. It's been 5 years since my last confession, and I have forgotten a lot. Starting here.

SuSe Linux - how to install a tarball.

I open it with Ark, Extract here, open Konsole, navigate to Desktop/firefox and issue ./configure

I get an error message saying file does not exist.

What should I be doing ? All 3 steps would be helpful, just to preempt my next mistake.

Thanks

Pete