New to FF and wondering...

Hello! I'm really looking forward to trying my hand at creating filters and hope to be a contributor in the future. I haven't read all of the Help pages available but from looking at the index of topics, I can tell that I'll need to do alot of reading and testing to truly learn how to use this. I was wondering if there was a complete 'manual' of sorts or a zip file of all of the Help pages that can be downloaded in one fell swoop? I'm not always using a computer that has online access and would like to have this help available to me without having to always be connected. Also, are there any alternative sites devoted to FF which offer useful tips and tutorials? I'm anxious to start and some sort of beginner tutorial would be incredibly helpful! Thanks for reading my post!

... 'ding' ...

Filter Forge help is included with the program itself (in chm format).
There are third-party tutorials as well:

Tutorial at PhotoshopSupport.com
Tutorial at Photoshop Roadmap
Tutorial at Renderosity
Tutorial at Perpetual Visions