Thanks for the response.  I'm using MVC 3, so I guess I would need to go the manual Jquery route.  I'm a little confused on how to do this using a layout.  Are you suggesting not using a layout and have the layout be the view and return each page as a partial view within a page, or is there some other way to do this.  Each view in my application is using a layout like below.  Can you give me an example of how to do this with jquery?

@{
     ViewBag.Title ="My List Page";
     Layout ="~/Views/Shared/_MainUserMenu.cshtml";
    }