I have successfully made a shoutbox and update module using macro. Yes this means I need a couple more strings translated, I will post them in the translation post once i am sure these are the ones we need.
The shoutbox is made using a diff template in a folder and macro. Basically the files instead of being shown as links are actually loaded, this produces a shoutbox with the folder being the database, each file(post) is named by the poster and a timestamp.
It is the best we can do with hfs and macro for now and i think it works quite nicely
An administrator account must be set to delete posts, i might change this so that there is an option for any logged account to delete posts. There is one bug with this, HFS can't use a diff template for a sub real folder (below the hosted directory) so i'll have to wait until this bug is squished to release the build.
I have even included 10-12 emoticons.
The update module works using a simple load of a file from our server that has a variable in it. This might be updated to a php database system but the way it works now is easy enough for me.
This now means users that disable javascript can check for updates and the shoutbox is ready to roll once you install the template
Here is a screenshot of both features in action.