The magic is in box-sizing:border-box;. For compatibility with Firefox, chrome<10, and safari<5.1, add the -webkit- and -moz- prefixes. IE supports it as of 8.0.
<!doctype html>
<html lang='en'>
<head>
<meta charset='utf-8'>
<title>very structured layout</title>
<style type='text/css'>
* {margin:0; padding:0;}
body {background:#fff; position:absolute; width:100%; height:100%;}
#main {background:#888; height:100%; padding:60px 0 40px; box-sizing:border-box;}
#head {background:#f8f; position:absolute; width:100%; height:60px;}
#left {background:#ff8; float:left; width:250px; height:100%; overflow:scroll;}
#right {background:#8f8; height:100%; overflow:scroll;}
#foot {background:#f88; position:absolute; bottom:0; width:100%; height:40px;}?
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id='head'>header: width = 100%, height = 40px</div>
<div id='main'>
<div id='left'>left: width = 250px, height = 100%</div>
<div id='right'>right: width = 100% - 250px, height = 100%</div>
</div>
<div id='foot'>foot: width = 100%, height = 60px</div>?
</body>
</html>
fiddle
edit: after Andres' solution made me realize I could achieve greater compatibility, I messed around a bit and came up with an alternate solution, which I think is more intuitive as well. It doesn't work in IE7, but it does work in IE8.
The page is the same as the above, with the only change being that the CSS is replaced with this:
* {margin:0; padding:0;}
body {background:#fff;}
#main {background:#888; position:absolute; top:40px; bottom:60px; width:100%;}
#head {background:#f8f; position:absolute; width:100%; height:40px;}
#left {background:#ff8; position:absolute; width:250px; height:100%; overflow:scroll;}
#right {background:#8f8; margin-left:250px; height:100%; overflow:scroll;}
#foot {background:#f88; position:absolute; bottom:0; width:100%; height:60px;}
fiddle
Note that, for both versions, #head and #foot need to have an overflow property other than visible if their content would otherwise extend off the page.
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