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Check into John Long's excellent books. They're detailed, entertaining and knowledgeable. Since you are new to the sport, it may be hard to "know what you don't know". Some of the info you'll gather in person will be good, and some of it will be bullshit. It won't take long for you to learn what smells and what doesn't, but in the meantime, Long's books, or Mountaineering Freedom of the Hills, are reliable, cheap life insurance.

I second getting a "knot for climbers" book. There are some basic anchor rules from AMGA about having an equalized, redundant, no extension, solid anchor......... But realize every situation is different and there is not a one size fit all type of anchor.

Are you talking about using the figure-8 to tie a static line to your anchor points?

Here's my advice:

First, don't try to figure this stuff out initially via Mountain Project. It will likely just confuse you at this point (similar to the above person saying "you don't know what you don't know).

Second, pick up the John Long anchors book. Read it. Multiple times. This will give you a great base and will likely answer 90% of your questions.

Third, after reading John Long's book, ask additional questions here that either supplement the Long book or go beyond its scope.

Note: I'm not trying to discourage you from posting these questions, but I think the above approach will be far more useful (and safe).

Craig Leubben's anchor book as well. For trees you would be best served with a variation of this:
books.google.com/books?id=I…

Check out page 125

Your initial question didn't really make any sense because an equalizing 8 is usually for setting an anchor with the rope you are tied into while lead climbing. You may have scarred a few posters above.

You're on the right track with figure-8s but you want two of them tied off to two trees with two lockers on them. Get the drift here: redundancy.