Express & Jade, templates adding code to the layout
What you are asking for was released 3 days ago.
http://tjholowaychuk.com/post/10695801204/jade-stylus-0-16-0-released
I have personally been using it for a few weeks and love the recent additions. The block statement allows you to specify default content and any extension template can override a named block.
Basically, blocks override, includes append and extends chooses your parent template.
Try dust template engine.
It is far more interesting and designer friendly.
In dust you can write base.html:
<html><head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> <title>kiss.js example</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/css1.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/css2.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/js1.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/js2.js"></script> {+head/}</head><body> <div style="height: 100%"> <div id="header"> <h1>kiss.js example - {+header}{/header}</h1> {+header_buttons}{/header_buttons} </div> <div id="content"> {+content}{/content} </div> <div id="footer"> <table> <tr> <td> </td> <td style="width: 100%; text-align: center;">made with kiss.js</td> <td>{+footer_buttons}{/footer_buttons}</td> </tr> </table> </div> </div></body>and view.html:
{>base.html/}{<content} <h2>name: {name}</h2> <h3>{foo}</h3> {#numbers} <div>{.}</div> {/numbers}{/content}