Managing views, how do you do it?

[eluser]eightamrock[/eluser]
Hello All,

I'm new to CI, but I am familiar with MVC architectures such as ROR and Cake.

The question I have always struggled with is how to properly manage views. Do you construct your views from header and footer files, or do you have a view for every page/function that feeds dynamic data?

I am used to one central view that includes a switch function that pulls the proper layout for a page. This makes managing views easy, but I am struggling with how to do something similar in CI. I know ROR offers a default layout that will pass in data from your function automatically.

I'm open to suggestion or just a healthy debate on the best way to do it.

-Sam