595 Shift Registers

I need some help programing with shift registers... i am driving 3 8x8 LED displays and need some good resources on shift registers and Arduino programing for a compete software beginner.

I have read that entire document and it makes literally not an ounce of sense to me for writing a sketch for controlling 3 matrices with shift registers.

Some of the code from: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShftOut21

in setup add:-
rowEnable = 1;

then in the main loop add the lines in red
void loop() {
//count up routine
for (int j = 0; j < 256; j++) {
//ground latchPin and hold low for as long as you are transmitting
digitalWrite(latchPin, 0);
//count up on RED LEDs
shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, j);
//count down on BLUE LEDs
shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, 255-j);
//enable the row
shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, rowEnable);
rowEnable = rowEnable <<1;
if(rowEnable >0x80) rowEnable = 1;
//count up on Green LEDs
shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, j);
//return the latch pin high to signal chip that it
//no longer needs to listen for information
digitalWrite(latchPin, 1);
delay(1000);
}
}

This will display very slowly but you will get the idea.

two 595s can work together something like a MAX7221. You may want to read that documentation first.

http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/MAX72XXHardware#WiringLedMatrix