eob, let me clarify what you want so others will get a clear picture...
You basically want a way to display a thread (the entire message) via Javascript so you could display it on a non vB page. Kinda like what camcorferinfo.com does, right?
All the thread messages would be identified by a special ID number so only the right one would display on the corrrect page (this could be the title of the thread).
And finally if there were no posts, a 'reply' button would simply show to let someone leave a comment.
---
I think people should check out this example for a visual representation of what we'd all like:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...der-review.htm
(scroll to the bottom of the page)
---
Now I believe some (if not most) could be done in external.php. All we need is a way to query which threads are displayed, and a way to show the entire thread (not just a link with the thread name).