darrinb

Build a better category list.
The Advanced Categories Widget is a powerful and flexible category widget for WordPress that makes building and displaying custom category lists a snap.
Organize your site in style with this highly customizable category widget!
Features
<ul>
<li>Build multiple lists!</li>
<li>Select which categories to display.</li>
<li>Choose how to order your categories: name, post count, etc.</li>
<li>Set the order for displaying the categories.</li>
<li>Supports category thumbnails.</li>
<li>Set and preview custom thumbnail sizes, or choose from your site’s registered image sizes.</li>
<li>Show a description of each category.</li>
<li>Set and preview the length of the description.</li>
<li>Select the list format to match your site’s markup. Choose from:<code>ol</code>, <code>ul</code>, or <code>div</code>.</li>
<li>Show post count.</li>
<li>Choose the default (basic) CSS styling or roll your own.</li>
</ul>
Developer Features
This widget was built not only with end-users in mind, but also plugin developers. Almost every aspect of this widget is extensible through filters and action hooks. You can even add your own form fields to the widget form!
<ul>
<li>Need to remove a field from the widget form? Not a problem! Every field is passed through its own filter for easy customization.</li>
<li>Need to modify the output of the widget? Easy! The output is passed through numerous filters, allowing you to customize the post list to meet your project’s requirements.</li>
<li>For a full list of action hooks and filters, please see the plugin documentation: http://darrinb.com/plugins/advanced-categories-widget</li>
</ul>

Advanced Categories Widget

A highly customizable categories widget for WordPress with thumbnails and descriptions.

dancoded

Display categories as a list of links or a dropdown jump-menu (automatically navigate to page when selected).
Includes advanced options to change the taxonomy, display post counts and the category hierarchy, change how they are ordered, add CSS styles and modify the title.
Replaces the built in Categories Widget (WP_Widget_Categories).
A hook is available to filter the title: <code>dmg_categories_widget_title</code>.
For example, to change the title on a single page or post, you could add this to your functions.php file:
<pre><code>function myTitleFilter( $title ) { if( is_singular() ) { return "$title"; } else { return $title; 
 } } add_filter( 'dmg_categories_widget_title' , 'myTitleFilter'); </code></pre>
More information about this plugin can be found at <a href="http://dancoded.com/wordpress-plugins/categories-widget/" rel="nofollow ugc">http://dancoded.com/wordpress-plugins/categories-widget/</a>.

DMG Categories Widget

Displays categories as a list or dropdown jump-menu. With advanced options to add CSS classes and modify the title .

Advanced Categories Widget vs DMG Categories Widget