Ahhh, I see it now. Thanks for clarification Richy T.

Even with the DHTML, this is still a hack because you're going to have to create a query for the first "foo" characters of the post. So, DHTML alone won't do the trick.

I found the hack at vBulletin.org that can do this. It's by nicksaunders and called Improved Thread Preview Hack [link].

Since this is a hack, we can't support you here at vBT, but the good people at vBulletin.org can fix you up. :)