link_to_remote : render a view

when a user clicks on a link_to_remote I would like to it to render a view that i already have established. I know about page.redirect_to
but that would force a refresh. Id like to do something like page.replace "an_existing_view" is this possible or would i have to convert the view into a partial first?

You can replace any element on the page (so I suppose you could do an
update on the body element, although I've never done that. It is most common to have a partial for exactly that bit of the page
that needs refreshing (if you're using ajax to refresh the entire page
then it seems to me like you might as well keep it simple and just do
a non ajax update) but you shouldn't have to do that.

Fred

thanks fred, what im doing is pertty much like gmail. I have links
on my side nav equivalent to gmails "inbox" and "starred". When i click on inbox in gmail it renders the list of emails in my inbox without a refresh. Teh same with all "starred" etc. Id like that functionality.

So i guess id have to extract that area of the screen into a partial
and call it via a page.replace_html "the_partial" and for standard html responses just render the same partial in the actions view? right???

Yes. If you're just updating that one page element you don't even need
replace_html, just do

link_to_remote 'blah', :update => 'some_id', ...

and have the corresponding controller render some (html) partial in
the normal way, the results of the render will be used to update the
page element with that id

Fred