How do you build up a simple set of buttons/menus

What I want is lets say 2 rows of buttons, first row determens what is on the secound row, and then I want one big global button to the left that shall always be there and if you press it you basicly get todo a search.

I just want to know how do you plan all this?

atm. my flash is not very orginised, its so that I have text in one layer, grafic in another and actionscript in a 3rd. The first row is easy I got some buttons, some random grafic on them when thing happen (curser over, out, down et.c.)
But how do I change the secound row in a good way? I thought that I could just add another frame and in the frame just remove the old text and add some new, and then make a new frame for each button at the top row. This might work but what about the global button? I want it to always be there, but then I would have to add a frame for when its not pressed and Im in frame1, then when its pressed and still frame1, so I would get alot of frames just to cover up all combinations of menu1+menu2.

There must be a better way, how can I get my global button to just follow the normal frames, and when pressed only change its own frames?

Is there a easy way? If Im unclear just say so and Ill post a screenshot or similar