Thanks for the reply Peter.  I looked in the section you suggested, and see an example of the onClick, but i am still at a loss as to use it to call another script.  My latest attempts was something like this...

var f2 = w2.add ("button", undefined,"Remove Menu");

f2.onClick = function()

{

var f = File('C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Version 7.5\en_US\Scripts\Scripts Panel\Scripts\MenuTest_1.jsx');

$.evalFile(f);

}

but it doesn't appear to do anything.  I am not getting any error messages or any indication that anything is wrong, it just doesn't seem to do anything at all.

Am I on the right track, and do you see anything obvious that would not cause it to work, or am I going in a completely wrong direction.

Thanks Gotterman, but the issue I was having was that the dialogs I was opening were not being created by me.  They were more like OS generated windows.  So I am not able to give the window a name, or the input field a name in order to reference it.

Peters response was actually correct, although I did have to open the folder dialog a bit differently to get it to work.  I had to use a style that I got from Jongware in a previous thread, but the concept that Peter showed in the last post pointed me in the right direction. 

I just have one more piece to figure out, how I am going to pass the variables to another script, but I think that is something i will have to work out on my own.

For anyone who is curious, here is the code I came up, modifying and combining some of Peters examples from the book plus the help he gave me in this thread.  The alert after closing the dialog is just for testing to show that the values are being held by the variables so I can use them else where.

function mySnippet(){    

//<fragment>   

#target indesign;

#targetengine "session";

var w2 = new Window("palette", "Window 2", undefined, {resizeable: true});

var e2 = w2.add ("edittext"); e2.characters = 30;

var e3 = w2.add ("edittext"); e3.characters = 30;

var f2 = w2.add ("button", undefined,"Browse XML");              

var f3 = w2.add ("button", undefined,"Browse Folder");              

var f4 = w2.add ("button",undefined,"SAVE AND RUN");              

var tf              

var tfo                

f2.onClick = function()                {               

tf = File.openDialog("Select your XML File","*.xml");                    

if (tf != null)                    

{                        

e2.text = tf;                    

}

}                

f3.onClick = function()                {              

var tfol = new Folder("~/My Documents")               

tfo = tfol.selectDlg("Get Folder");                    

if (tfo != null)                    

{                        

e3.text = tfo;                    

}

}                         

f4.onClick = function()               

{                    

w2.close();                   

alert ("xml value: " + tf  + "\nfolder value: " + tfo);                

}  

w2.show();    

//</fragment>

}

Thanks. That will probably come in helpful at some point. Unfortunately it won't help me at the moment. 

However, I did figure out how to pass the variables based on this post.  I am setting them up as environment variables in my JSX file like so..

f2.onClick = function()                {              

tf = File.openDialog("Select your XML File","*.xml");                   

if (tf != null)                   

{                       

e2.text = tf;

tf = tf.absoluteURI

$.setenv("myFileVar",tf)                 

}

}

and then grabbing them in my  VBS script  like this..

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Set objEnv = WshShell.Environment("Process")

myFileName = objEnv("myFileVar")

The problem that I am running into is that the file and folder dialogs don't give me an absolute path, but a path that is relative to the startup disk.  It is discussed in this post and I haven't found any way to get around it yet.  From the discussion, it doesn't sound like there is a work around, so I may just be out of luck in trying to do what I want to do.  But I am going to keep trying for a bit longer.

So for example, when I open a file dialog and I choose a file in My Documents, I get    ~/Documents/DM_Layout_Test_2.xml    returned

When I choose a folder, like    MyDocuments/My Pictures  I get this returned..     ~/Documents/My%20Pictures

If I choose something like the Root of C:  i get     /c     returned.    

If I choose something on a separate drive like this...   M:\XMLDocs\DM_Layout_Test_2.xml       I get this... \m\XMLDocs\DM_Layout_Test_2.xml

None of which my code seems to like.  If I hard code the paths like...     C:\Users\erich\Documents\DM_Layout_Test_2.xml        Then it works fine.

So ultimatly what I would like is to either A) find a way to get the absolute path and be able to use that or B) figure out a way to work with what I am getting returned. 

I have tried: .Parent, .FullName, .fsName but nothing seems to work.  I thought about trying to do an alias, but I haven't figured out how to make that work yet.

RE: Environment variables - I am certainly open to another way of doing it, that was just the first solution I came across that worked.

I have been back and forth through Chapter 3 today at least 3 times, and I am just as confused as ever. 

I am just going to assume that Environment variables are a bad way to go based on Peter and Johns comments, although I don't actually know why, so I have also tried to find out more about application and document labels, but I can't find any reference to them. I thought I might also try doing it as a text file, but am not having any luck going that way either so far.

So can someone give me a direction as to where I can find more info on application and document labels, or maybe an example of how to use them?  Or if you guys think using a file would be better for what I am trying to do, let me know and  I will try to get that to work.