The present invention provides a method and article of manufacture for formatting electronic documents. In general, an electronic document contains an activebackground tag which, when parsed by a browser allows a first electronic document to format, or overlay, a second electronic document with additional or replacement content. Although overlaid by the first electronic document, portions of the second electronic document remain visible and accessible to the user unless explicitly overridden by the first electronic document. In particular, hyperlinks provided by the second electronic document can remain active.