check out this site

http://centrallane.net/mintra/main.html

notice how she has the links on the left and it changes the box on the right. is this frames? tables? frames within tables? i'm not sure how all this works. can someone please help me?

also, is this an efficient way or because everytime the link changes, the whole page has to upload rather than just the text place that is changing that i shouldn't try to use something like this?

table layout.
scrolling div area (similar look as an iframe).

the page(s) are quite fast to load, so loading a new one each time isn't too bad. using an iframe may be a bit better if you have a page with heavier content on it.