Hey,

This is unrelated to the original question, but you had mentioned the orange book is not recommended (I was under the assumption it was one of the better books out there). Do you have any books you would recommend on the topic? Seems like the best resources are slideshows and code samples, but i really do learn better from books....

Read the books referenced by the authors in each slideshow on Box2D resources. Usually each talk has a References section linking the materials that helped the author understand the subject being discussed in details.

Real-Time Collision Detection book and Dirk Gregorius's talks should be sufficient reads for learning how to detect collisions and generate contact points on primitives. On more complex shapes, you need the GJK and SAT algorithms. There are some resources on box2d.org and gamedev.net about these algorithms as well.

Computational Dynamics by Shabana covers constraints in details.