The reason it's a pop-up window is so you can leave it open while you browse the board and it'll auto-refresh every minute or so to update the list (especially handy if you've set it to show only those online).

Making it a DHTML window will lose that functionality.

Friends pending approval appear in the Friends tab with a different background color.

Nice, maybe there could be a note saying it will refresh every minute.

suggestions

1.ability to manage friends by making folders and add friends to it
2.New posts in forum by my friends (this was in ipbbuddies modification)