I have a project on which my people want to change the content column of the page when a menu item is clicked, without reloading the whole page. This is exactly what Ajax is good for isn't it? I don't want to use iframes because they often insert (unsightly) scroll bars. Any ideas? Where can I find tutorials that will lead me through coding the necessary scripts?
Thanks,
Matt

http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/default.asp

BTW

Search engines cannot read text loaded with AJAX.

jQuery .ajax or .load or .get

Just put the secondary content in a div which has display:none. Then when clicking you just swap the display parameter on the first div to none and the second one to block with a javascript function.

There is a better way that doesn't even need Javscript: http://www.impressivewebs.com/demo-f...-switcher.html

Let me back up a moment. I am talking about loading images, links, text, whole pages into the content div.

Do you recommend doing this at all?

Is there a proper technique to do this?

a)"iframes" leave "scrollbars". And other problems maybe?
b)If we do use "Ajax", the content would not be available to web bots, or even my custom Google search bar, either. Right?

Search engines cannot read text loaded with AJAX.

If it were accessible, It would display much differently when loaded in to the content div compared to when it was loaded into the browser window by a Google custom search bar without the content div containing it.

c)The content is not accessible by JavaScript, because the files are on the server, not the user side.

Do you recommend not doing the content div loading separately at all?
Thanks.

Use AJAX.

The CSS stuff that chrishurst showed us is only able to display content that is already in the page itself.

Let me back up a moment. I am talking about loading images, links, text, whole pages into the content div.

Content from the same domain? Then it is not a big problem with the readability for bots.

I did that stuff several times myself - with a little trick, jQuery FTW