Arno Welzel

This widget displays top level categories in multiple columns.
After installation, just add the widget to desired sidebar or footer and optionally enter a custom title and the number of columns to be displayed.
By default two columns are used, but you can set any number of columns you like in the backend.
Also see details at <a href="http://arnowelzel.de/wp/en/projects/wordpress/multicolumn-category-widget" rel="nofollow ugc">http://arnowelzel.de/wp/en/projects/wordpress/multicolumn-category-widget</a>.

Multicolumn Category Widget

This widget displays top level categories in multiple columns.

Sometimes when you divide up your WordPress content into categories it all ends up in sub-categories of one or two main categories that don’t have any content themselves.
With the widget you can add a list of sub-categories even if the parent doesn’t have posts.
You can display and filter sub-categories in various ways:
<ul>
<li>Use the parent category as the widget title</li>
<li>Show post counts in bracket next to the name</li>
<li>Hide empty sub-categories</li>
<li>Add a link to the parent category to the widget title</li>
<li>Show the full sub-category tree so it include sub-sub categories and so on as well</li>
<li>Display the list as dropdown rather than as links</li>
<li>Use the first category of the current post as the parent</li>
<li>Exclude one or more sub-categories from the list</li>
<li>List the categories in reverse order</li>
</ul>

Sub Categories Widget

This Widget lists the sub-categories for a given category.

Multicolumn Category Widget vs Sub Categories Widget