darrinb

This recent comments widget provides advanced widget features for displaying comment author avatars and an excerpt of their comment.
Features
<ul>
<li>Select which post types to show comments for. (You can choose either all types, or a specific type.)</li>
<li>Exclude pingbacks and trackbacks.</li>
<li>Set the number of comments to show.</li>
<li>Set the order for displaying the comments.</li>
<li>Show comment author avatar.</li>
<li>Set and preview avatar size.</li>
<li>Show an excerpt of the comment.</li>
<li>Determine the length of the excerpt.</li>
<li>Select the comment list format to match your site’s markup. Choose from: <code>ol</code>, <code>ul</code>, or <code>div</code>.</li>
<li>Select the comment format. Choose between <code>html5</code> or <code>xhtml</code>.</li>
<li>Create multiple comment lists with different settings.</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 comment 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-comments-widget</li>
</ul>

Advanced Comments Widget

A highly customizable recent comments widget with avatars and excerpts.

Jenn Schiffer

The Featured Comment Widget gives you the ability to shine a spotlight on some of your favorite comments on the site.
Installing this plugin adds the Featured Comment Widget to your list of available widgets in the ‘Widgets’ submenu (which you can find under ‘Appearance’ in your WordPress dashboard). Every comment has an numeric ID, and putting that ID in the widget form results in the that comment (or commentS if you enter multiple IDs), along with the name and Gravatar of its commenter, showing in the sidebar. The Gravatar and username is automatically a link to that comment in its respective post.
<h3>Widget CSS</h3>
The following are the classes and explanations of them for those of you who want to style your widget in the custom.css file:
<ul>
<li>.featuredComment-comment – a single comment block containing the content and citation, default: { margin: 20px auto; }</li>
<li>.featuredComment-comment-content – the comment text, default: { margin: 3px auto 5px;}</li>
<li>.featuredComment-cite – the citation that includes gravatar and author name, default: { display: block; text-align: left; line-height: 1em;}</li>
<li>.featuredComment-gravatar – the gravatar image within citation, default: {float: right; padding: 0px 5px;}</li>
<li>.featuredComment-author – the “posted by …” author link within citation, default: {float: right;}</li>
</ul>

Featured Comment Widget

The Featured Comment Widget gives you the ability to shine a spotlight on some of your favorite comments on the site.

Advanced Comments Widget vs Featured Comment Widget