Common Header / Footer with static HTML

Question

Is there a decent way with static HTML/XHTML to create common header/footer files to be displayed on each page of a site? I know you can obviously do this with PHP or server side directives, but is there any way of doing this with absolutely no dependencies on the server stitching everything together for you?

Edit: All very good answers and was what I expected. HTML is static, period. No real way to change that without something running server side or client side. I've found that Server Side Includes seem to be my best option as they are very simple and don't require scripting.

Answer 1

There are three ways to do what you want

Server Script

This includes something like php, asp, jsp.... But you said no to that

Server Side Includes

Your server is serving up the pages so why not take advantage of the built in server side includes? Each server has its own way to do this, take advantage of it.

Client Side Include

This solutions has you calling back to the server after page has already been loaded on the client.