Check out any board in
www.aimoo.com. (go to the homepage, click "Showcase" and see any board in the list.
What it used to do in the topic listing page, is on holding the mouse-over of the the topic name, a description box came up with the forst couple of lines of the first post (almost in the lines of what "Active topics" display in UBB).
It was very useful in the sense that once could skim quickly through the content and decide whether to read the full thing or not. It helps to reduce server requests by a BIG margin, since the user did not have to necessarily click on the topic to know the contents.
In the latest version, they have actually introduced a roll-up/roll-down in the topics page itself to display the author and contents of all the replies.
Porting that feature to UBB will be a cool addition, not only in the front end, but also in the back-end.
