There are times that I would like to print the output of a view without it being rendered from a template i.e. it would go through page.tpl.php. I find this useful when say I'd like to do an Ajax call and I'd like it to return just the output of the view itself so I could print it inside a div container for example. This is quite simple as I could use drupal_json as my reference.

I first created a new menu like so:

<?php
function MODULE_menu() {
  $items = array();

  $items['example/js'] = array(
    'page callback' => 'MODULE_menu_callback',
    'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
    'access callback' => TRUE,
  );

  return $items;
}

Then the callback which is based on drupal_json():

<?php
function MODULE_menu_callback() {
  drupal_set_header('Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8');

  echo views_embed_view('view_name');
}

Now, I could just do a simple ajax call to use the output inside any element like so:

$.get(Drupal.settings.basePath + 'example/js', function(data) {
  $('.some-element').html(data);
});

Woot! :D