yeh you just remove the lid and push it down on the shell (till it clicks) as you would the lid, just make sure you have fed the fingers into the loader first ...there's instructions on the packaging but its not exactly rocket science
no they need to move, the weight of the pod (paint) pushes the fingers down when you load ,and the balls pushing up the way when your moving stops the paint coming back out, the excess on the fingers is to stop them coming out of the shells when there is weight against them.
like so
on a side note i think they need to be played with a bit and broken in you need to slam the paint in at first although I imagine this will get easier through use .
I might trim my legs down a bit...used one today (the one I won!)...you cant fill from a bag too well now...and when you have some paint in the hopper and pot up...the fingers stop the paint frrom rolling to the board end of teh loader and hence, you cant get all the paint in.