[Dynapi-Help] DynAPI Guru Question

[Jason W. <Jas...@tr...>]

Howdy Folks,
 
I'm dreading posting this to the list, but I can't stand it any longer.  So please, any responses should be directed to my email and not the list.  By doing so, you don't clutter the list with responses to my borderline DynAPI question.
 
I've been lurking Dan's original Forum (now defunct) and this list for about 4 months now and am amazed at the expertise you guys/gals show with DHTML and DynAPI.  My question is how did you learn all of this stuff and how can I do so also?  I'm what I consider a book programmer with no practical experience.  But, as you well know, reading a book doesn't mean you're a programmer!  I can read O'Reilly's JavaScript book and Dan's tutorial all day long and run through the examples, but that doesn't do "jack" for me in becoming a *real* programmer.  As a matter of fact, I have so many books, my entire department thinks I'm the Technical Library.  Yet, I can still only right "toddler" code.
 
I want to be able to do the practical things you guys do with the DynAPI, but don't know how to get there.  I would ultimately love to be able to write a MenuList widget for DynAPI 2, but don't have a clue where to start.  Please...could anyone give me some direction...oh great Guru's?
 
Humbly
Hopeless (Jason W.)
 
P.S. I have a version of Dan's v1 MenuList running on a website, but that's only because you guys did all of the work!  I can read part of the code and then I get stuck at certain points.  Thus the need for this post.