Yo Playa,
I faced the same question a short time ago. What I did was purchase o'reilly's DHTML Definitive Guide. It is a multipart book. I'm almost finished the actual DHTML section and I am ready to script positioning into my pages. My primary goal is to get with it and dump HTML. Exchange data, not rendering giz.
That'll give you the chutzpah to move onto the plethora of sites that have scripts on them. Stay away from the canned scripters like DreamWeaver, and GoLive. Those are for chumps. Actually, I gotta admit that I do use the script editor in GoLive but that requirement is slowly dwindling.
peace,
Dr. Kevorka