[url=http://wonderwinds.com/hackblog.php/2008/08/17/image-list-widget-hack-for-2-4-2]Where we present a tutorial embedded in a hack :)[/url]

What this does for you is it creates a new widget. Not a plugin that makes a widget: actually creating an actual widget that shows up in your list of widgets like all the stock existing widgets. I did it that way because I've already hacked core files so why would I bother with the "plugin as middleman" hogging up server resources it doesn't need? That by the way is the tutorial part: how easy it is to simply add a new widget to the list. Basically you write your new widget (create a file) and modify one file so that it knows your new widget exists.

THIS particular hack acts kinda like the "Post list" widget except for it only shows posts that have a linked image in them, then gives you an appropriately resized image for use in your sidebar. To make sure it worked I had to add a new parameter for how many posts to look through to try to get the number of images you want. So like if you want 5 images but sometimes post without a linked image you might tell it to look through 10 posts to find 5 with linked images.

Many thanks to sam2kb for his get_file_by_item_ID() hack, which, by the way, I actually made slightly more awesome to support this hack.