i had to explain this to someone and i figured i'd post it here as well.
you may have noticed on www.daisey.com a lot of code is tucked away in .js files.
where did it go? what'd she *do* with that code? :)

.js files make life *much* easier!!!

Whatever you want to have on each page: navigation, a header, a footer, etc.,
put all of it in a .js file and then link to it from your pages. That way,
if you change something, you can make the change to *one* .js file rather
than every single page.

create a new text document with the following:
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document.write('<table><tr><td>');
document.write('<b>stuff goes here</b><br>');
document.write('<b>stuff goes here</b><br>');
document.write('</td></tr></table>');

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save it as "whatever.js"

then link to it from your HTML page like this:

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<SCRIPT SRC = "whatever.js"></SCRIPT>

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that's pretty much it!
now you can make changes to "whatever.js" and it will automatically update
any page that has the link to it.

just remember, in the .js file...
start each line with:    document.write('
and end it with this:    ');

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another thing to keep in mind...
you can't use a single quote ( ' ) within the single quotes.
basically what happens is it thinks you're ending the line.
so you have to "escape" your single quotes by doing this:

document.write('you can\'t use single quotes!');

just put a \ in front of your single quote
that might be true for double quotes too, i don't remember off hand.

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* yes, you can have more than one link to more than one .js file per page.
for example, on daisey.com, i have one for the left side with the photo
gallery link, one for the green drop down box and one for the right side
peach navigation stuff.

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i hope this helps...
seriously, using javascript include files is a greatway to make your
layout much more organized and faster to change.

there are other ways of doing this, like shtml, but this is just *one* way.

if you have any problems, let me know. 
or here's a great resource: www.irt.org

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good luck!

~ daisey