[Framers] Who's in charge?

[Dennis Brunnenmeyer]

FrameMaker 7.2, Unstructured
Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit
Target output: PDF only

As a relatively new beginner, I hate to bother experts with this 
question, but where can I find concise information about the topics 
below. I have the original Adobe 7.0 book as well as their Classroom In 
A Book. Neither of them, as far as I can tell, address the overall 
concept of how these tools described below interact with each other. 
Instead, those books seem to be just a list of step-by-step procedures 
on how to accomplish tasks.

Oh, and I also have The Complete Reference / FrameMaker 7 book by Sarah 
O'Keefe and Sheila Loring. It's size alone is intimidating, but maybe 
the information I need is somewhere in there.

It seems to me that there are three ways to affect paragraph styles:  1) 
Paragraph designer while in Body view mode, 2) Paragraph designer while 
viewing Master and Reference Pages, and 3) the Formatting Bar.

Compounding my confusion is the fact that there are character and 
paragraph styles on the Reference pages that aren't in the Character 
catalog and Paragraph catalogs.

When working on a paragraph on the body pages, it seems like the 
Formatting bar and the Paragraph designer sometimes "disagree" with each 
other. Trying to change the  Default font style for a paragraph 
sometimes doesn't "take hold," meaning no visible changes are made when 
applying the desired change.

If I want to change the color of the text in a paragraph designer, do I 
need to create a new character format or a new paragraph format?

Again, all I'm looking for, as far as I can tell, is a proper reference 
document that explains the interaction between these tools,  a general 
discussion of when and how they interact, and which one to use.

Thanks.

Dennis...