i want to use this motor sheild for a project any tips on how to use the sheild?thanks!
madbomb, I'm surprised no-one has directed you to the Adafruit tutorials. The following link might get you started.
Ken
If you are wanting to use stepper motors you can go with pololu stepper motor drivers attached to a breadboard. They have current limiting which is very nice. I didn't download your picture but if it is like the adafruit motor shield and does not have current limiting it could be a problem. I have fried a few of the adafruit shields by trying to hook up stepper motors that drew too much current (2A/phase).
Along with this, using pololu drivers lets you have more control over how your motors turn. I needed to make my motor shafts follow a 5th order polynomial angular trajectory which nobody is going to give you a built in function for. You just tell the arduino to pulse one of the pololu pins from high to low and the stepper will move one step (or microstep).
Using that information you can build your code around driving the motors how you want them to be driven. If you have small motors and just want to go from angle A to angle B however a motor shield with built in motion functions might be simpler. Just make sure you don't exceed the current rating of the shield.