Timeline: Swissair 111 crash investigation - Canada - CBC News
There was a very good film made of the Swissair MD11 crash where the Captain was an official procedures man! The First officer made all the right judgments but the Captain insisted on going by the book and left the final approach to go out to sea to dump fuel with awful consequences.
Every situation is different but priority with smoke in the cockpit has to be to land as quickly as possible.
As stated I have been on a flight with an electrical fire and until you have experienced just how dense and acrid the smoke can be it is hard to appreciate the reality of such a situation.
In a light GA first port of call has to be to isolate the source of the fire so the master switch has to be the first point of call in an electrical fire.
I would probably then manually shut everything down apart from one radio and then go back on with the master and monitor the situation.
ATC were a massive help in our night fire basically because they reduced the work load by giving us direct vectors and clearing airspace for an uninterupted descent so if its possible to keep radio contact all the better even if the radio is on for short periods of time.
Pace