I would love and im sure a lot of other users that choose not to use shtml would also love is a mod to the posting pages so that it recreates a small HTML file with a digest of the 10 most recent topics, make the number configurable. This could then be included with ease on any other page of the site using any programming language.
Im not talking about Active Topics, that requires ssi, This could be a lot simpler, and proberbly more usefull.