BettyJJ

<h4>Main features of the plugin:</h4>
<ol>
<li>It supports multi-byte language (such as Chinese). It will not produce gibberish as some other excerpt plugins do.</li>
<li>The html tags in the original posts, i.e., the font styles, colors, hyperlinks, pictures and such are preserved in the excerpt.</li>
<li>For better readability, it displays 300 characters for each post on the homepage and 150 characters for each post on archive pages.</li>
</ol>


WP-UTF8-Excerpt

This plugin generates a better excerpt for multi-byte language users (Chinese, for example). Besides, it keeps the html tags in the excerpt.

stesvis

<p>This plugin allows you to choose which post categories youe site will show on your frontpage. Just go to settings and deselect the categories that you want to hide. To display posts from other categories on other pages you need to upgrade to the <a href="http://wppluginspool.com/wp-filter-post-categories/" rel="nofollow ugc">FULL version</a>.</p>


Frontpage category filter

Allows you to show on your frontpage only posts from the categories that you select.

WP-UTF8-Excerpt vs Frontpage category filter