Many popular web sites, such as nytimes.com, java.sun.com, or amazon.com, use a common layout for their web pages. For example, all three of the web sites listed above use a header-menu-content layout as depicted in Figure 8-1.
Figure 8-1. A Typical Web Page Layout
You can use HTML frames to achieve the layout shown in Figure 8-1, but frames are undesirable for several reasons. For example, frames make it hard for users to bookmark pages. Frames also generate separate requests, which can be problematic for web applications. Including content, which is the focus of this chapter, is generally preferred over frames.