There is a project generator, that generates a Nalu project. The generated project has a header, footer, navigation and content area.The content area will change when clicking a navigation item. It works in the same way as the way, Thomas mentioned, but is based on Nalu instead of Activities and Places. Nalu is a routing based framework to create applications. It uses the same patterns but in a different implementation. May be it helps to learn it.
ATM there is a bug inside the generator, if you select Domino-UI. Domino-UI updates a method name and I did not update the generator. (will do it during as soon as I have some free time)
You need to replace 'setLeftAddon' with 'addLeftAddOn'.