There are many ways one can DRY up templates when using Ember.js, it all depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

partial && template

{{partial "foo"}} will take a template foo.handlebars and insert it without changing anything, which is exactly the same as in Rails. There are no views created, no scope changes, it just inserts the template right there.

{{template}} isn’t really meant to be used anymore, so use {{partial}} instead.

view

{{view App.FooView}} will create an instance of App.FooView (with foo.handlebars template unless you override the name) and insert it in place. You can bind on properties of the view, such as {{view App.FooView contentBinding="foobar"}}, or just specify a property directly {{view App.FooView class="foobar"}}.

This is a low level thing and is mostly used to instantiate simple views, such as {{view Ember.TextField valueBinding="name" class="username"}}

render && control

Most of the time you’re looking to use {{render}} instead of {{view}} as it offers better means of abstraction. {{render "foo" bar}} will create a App.FooController and bind it’s content to bar. It also creates a App.FooView and renders a foo template.

One drawback is that {{render}} can not be called multiple times on a single route. If you need a self sustainable widget which can be created any number of times you want, you’re looking for {{control}} which has exactly the same effect as {{render}}, but it will have a new controller instance every time you call it, while {{render}w uses a singleton controller.

Please keep in mind that {{control}} is currently under heavy development and will probably change soon, because of the high number of issues there are with it.