[Plugin: Related Posts by Category Widget] Request: Improved settings

Excellent plugin! Just what I was looking for, except for a couple minor details that currently make it a 4/5 for me. I’d like to make some recommendations that I’m confident would improve on this plugin.

Starting with a small one, here’s a comparison between your widget and one created by Justin Tadlock for his Series plugin (http://ww.wp.xz.cn/extend/plugins/series/)
http://i.imgur.com/pBjWr.jpg

I personally think it’s a good idea to separate ‘order’ and ‘orderby’. Especially as you come up with more parameters to order posts by, it’d be nice to have that list cut in half.

Here’s another comparison, this time of each widget’s output (Series shown on top)
http://imgur.com/vTyLJ.jpg

The page ’01 – Other series’ is the active one. I would have really liked the choice to include the active page in the list, probably as an unclickable item by default, but that could be optional too.

Furthermore, sure I think you should be able to show category names, but they have to somehow be accentuated as the parenting entities that they are. Make them bold or italicized by default, and maybe also add an empty line between the category and the first page, possibly even with a dot added.

Example:

Category
*
Page1
Page2
Page3

http://ww.wp.xz.cn/extend/plugins/related-posts-by-category-widget/