hi there! and welcome. pretty new here myself but not new to smartphones. new to android!

1. a widget a little app thingy that will stay on one of your home screen. for example i have a calendar widget that stays up (synced to my gmail calender) at all times, shows my appointments and what not. also have some control widgets that are on off buttons for wifi, toggle brightness, etc. the google search bar on the homescreen is widget. these are just a few, there are TONS of them!
2. the dock is at the bottom of your homescreen, it has the phone app, email app....text, whatever else you add to it
3. Root is a means by wich you gain full write access to your phone, allowing you to do things you would not otherwise be able to do. unlocks areas of the OS you would not have had access to.
4. as for kies im not super familiar with it, i know theres a pieace of software that can be installed on your computer allowing you to synce stuff and update and whatnot, but i heard tale that it dosnt work for everyone
5. android native.....im drawing a blank here but im sure someone else can answer this one.

 

Here's a fine resource. Beyond the link, we're here for you.

FAQ - CapFAQ

 

Native in the context you're talking about means something developed specifically for the item in reference. In this case, a native app for Android would be an app that was developed just for Android generally using the development tools created for Android. Non-native apps would be something that was developed for, lets say, iPhones operating system, but was then emulated or rewritten to work for Android also. I hope that makes enough sense!

 

Welcome!

This is the best place to catch up that I have found.

A widget can be a lifesaver (in my case the calendar app I use).
Dock-The row at the bottom of the screen that shows 4 icons (if using touchwiz-can have more or less if using a different launcher or home replacement app) no matter what screen you are on.
Kies-Kies mini can be downloaded off of this site to your computer
Samsung

There is also this: FAQ - CapFAQ I have learned quite a bit from there.

I personally love android because of the customization that can be done and of course my widgets.

Enjoy your new phone!

 

You probably don't need to worry about rooting your phone. There are only a few things that you need root access for and most of those are really technical. The one that that you might find hard to do without root is to do a screen capture on your phone.

As other people have discussed the widgets are the little applications like clocks, list of friends, etc that are on your phone's home screen. Your phone already comes with some already. Go ahead and touch and hold down on a blank spot on your home screen, the phone will display a window for installing a widget or an application.

One of the first things you should get familiar wit is the app store. There should be an icon for it on the home screen already. You can download tons of new applications and widgets from the store, a whole bunch of them are free.

One the first things you will want to install is a bar code reader. A lot of times people will publish links to an application in the store as a funny barcode. They look like little black and white squares with random patters in them. After you install a bar code reader (I use one call Barcode Scanner, its free) you can just take a picture of the bar code and the phone will load up the page for the application in the app store. You can see a picture of what one of these codes look like here:

http://androidforums.com/samsung-captivate/125679-post-your-home-screens-4.html#post1248263

That post has a bar code for a pretty nice looking clock / weather widget. Once you have a bar code scanner you can just take a picture of it (yes, you can scan it right off your computer screen) and download the widget.

 

That's an Apple/iPhone thing. In Android it's called the "Marketplace".

 

Danngit, beat me to it!!

 

Yea, whatever. Its that place you download good stuff from.

Also to the OP. Check out the Swype keyboard that comes with your phone. Go under settings / Locale and text / Select input method and enable Swype. You enter words by tracing them on the screen. It takes some getting used to but its great when you get the hang of it. You can access the arrow keys and other functions by swiping your finger from the bottom left key (The swype key with the hand on it) to the one next to it (the sym key).

I think its one of the nicer features that's bundled with the phone.