WPBeginner.com has a great tutorial on how to style the WordPress comment form as well as the layout of the comments. Most of the changes are simple CSS edits but determining where those CSS attributes are located can sometimes be harder than making the edits. Their guide shows you how to add buttons to the Edit, Cancel, and Reply links using only CSS properties.
Speaking of styling comments, how many of you remember a service called CommentBits? CommentBits was an entire business built around the styling of comments in 2009 by Ryan Imel. In an interview I conducted with him, my thought was at the time that he would be able to create a nice niche for himself within a big market. However, things stagnated very quickly with a lack of new designs released. Even though the purchase link still appears to work, I’d be hesitant of purchasing anything through the site. I wonder though if something like CommentBits would be successful in today’s WordPress theme market?
I think there is a market there if someone pulls off a comments bits style service properly.
I used to make a living off of menus in that sort of way, although I moved away from that particular market as it seemed that most of the people wanting customised menus were wanting super bizarre highly user unfriendly menus which made it somewhat unmotivating to work on. Plus the advent of the WordPress menu system somewhat killed off the purpose of my menu plugin(s). The concept did seem to work though.
I had a vague plan of doing something similar with sliders, but shied away from that in the end. But I do think the idea is a sound one if someone were willing to put a lot of time into preparing some kick butt pre-made templates and systems for it.