This approach is also similar to Fusebox layouts without requiring Fusebox and without requiring all requests to run through one file. Additionally, you don't have any restriction on the use of <cfflush> (a problem with layouts in Fusebox 3).

Getting Started
Here are some steps to get started using layout components:

1. Create a "layouts" directory from the root of your Web site
2. Create (or download) layout.cfc in your layouts folder (see Listing 5)
3. Create a default.cfc in your layouts folder (see Listing 3)
4. Initialize default.cfc from Application.cfm. <cfset layout = CreateObject("component","layouts.default").init()>
5. Create any other layout components you need for your site
6. Use the layout components on each page (see Listing 1 and Listing 2)

Tip 2
Once your site is complete and tested, you can eliminate all white space before your HTML by adding <cfcontent reset="yes"> before the first line of html in your layout component. Don't do this until your site is fully tested as it could disrupt the display of problems that occur before you call layout.head().

Tip 3
You can access shared-scope variables (including request variables) from within components, but you cannot access local variables that were set outside of the component. I recommend manually passing in any required variables to your component (by adding a method to layout.cfc). If you do so, make sure you store the variables in the variables.me structure so that they will be retained when switching layouts.

Tip 4
If you need to output part of your layout after some of the contents of the page, you can add a method to your layout components to handle this. For example, on some sites, I need an extra layout.menu() method because I need to show my menu below content that is specific to the page. If you add a method like this, make sure to add it to layout.cfc (with no output) first. This will make sure that the method is always available, even for layouts that don't use it.

Conclusion
Layout components provide a flexible way to handle layouts for your sites. Try it out and I think you will find that the implementation of layout components is easy.

You can download the files from this example as well as layout components for PDF, Excel, and Word from my Web site (http://www.bryantwebconsulting.com). They have worked well for me and I look forward to hearing about how they work for you.

Good Luck!