Divs and frames...

The first time I ran into html was 1995 or 96 maybe. At then most web
sites where using frames. I never liked the kind of pages with visible
frame borders and disturbing background images, which made it
impossible to read the text. But I did like the idea of separating
info into several documents.

After several years of mostly C++ programming I have recently started
looking at web development again and been learning PHP and CSS.

Now days frames are almost banned and what I have heard from
web-developers is "only use frames when you must". I can understand
the many of the arguments why not, but I cannot find a good way to
having a "frame" (or table or div) separated into another
document. Also I like the behaviour of not needing to reload the whole
page.

I would like to have something like a div-tag (probably formatted by
a style-sheet) that has a contents source property so you can change
the contents and just load the contents in the div-tag.

Something like:
  <div id="leftBox"></div>
  <a href="leftBox.content='page1'">Page 1</a>

the div-tag might now become superfluous if you don't use it for
formatting/layout.

A simular behavior I believe I can achieve with some Javascript, but then
it would not be nice and clear code. And I would not get the behaviour of
just reload the contents in the div-tag only.

Or is there already a good way to achieve a behaviour somewhat like this?....


Joachim Ekstrand