By simply having an ActionMethod invoked through an asynchronous call which return Views you'll be able to build your web applications to take advantage of partial page rendering. The View will represent a complete fragment of HTML that the invoking javascript can insert directly into the DOM of the web-app. Your starting page may be a be something with tabs, and each tab could be loaded after the front tab has been rendered when clicked on.
As with full pages rendered using JSP or FreeMarker views, you can use HTML-editing tools (such as supported in modern IDEs or using standalone tools like DreamWeaver) to layout the 'div' you are trying to make. With this style of development you can make full blown Web 2.0 applications like Gmail.