In need of a practical certificate tutorial/overview

Can anyone recommend me an overview about certificate management? I'm a big "learn from Wikipedia" type of guy but the relevant data there is general information on public-key cryptography, and I'm looking to map that to practical knowledge about how certs are used (web browsing, exchange of business messages, etc.)

I don't need super-detailed information at this point, but I'm looking for a general overview about things like:

• File types one would expect to see, and what kind of information they contain
• How certs are organized and "chained"
• What certs are used for - I genera开发者_JS百科lly understand the basics like signing and encryption, but I know they're used for a lot more than that. For example, how are certs used in web browsing or (to validate a site), or HTTPS (to secure transmission)?

I'm a Windows guy, so information about the way certs are organized and used in Windows (the cert store) would be helpful as well.

Thanks!