Basically a minraise is raising exactly as much as the person before you raised (where a bet counts as a raise from 0). Like steveg said.
Say person A bets 4$. You can minraise to 8$ (because he 'raised' the bet from 0 to 4 = 4$ and you raise it from 4 to 8 = 4$). If A then raises to 20$, you can minraise to 32$ (because he went from 8 to 20 = 12$ and you went from 20 to 32 = 12$).