I was very surprised not to see the AF ON back button mentioned in either of the 2 articles dealing with autofocus in issue 2 - Nikon D-SLR crash course Part 5 Focusing and Aperture Pages 42-43 and What's Autofocus All About Pages 78-79.
To me the AF ON back button is "the" most important button on my D300. When I took the Nikonians D300/300s workshop one of the first things Steve Simon said was that he was going to give us the secret on how to make autofocusing easier - and that was the AF ON back button!
For still photography push the AF ON once and for sequence shooting of moving subjects continue to hold your finger on the back button. I guarantee this back button will make your autofocusing easier.