I love tags. I think it’s a brilliant idea to tag blog post. Not so much because I feel it enables people to find information they’re looking for, but because tag clouds usually offer a more adventurous mode of navigation. If I click on a tag called “water” there’s no way of telling whether I’m going to end up reading about water shortages in the third world or the chemical composition of rain. And I like surprises.
What I do not like however, is the way tag clouds traditionally look. Enlarging the font for often-used tags causes all sorts of line height weirdness, which bugs me. This why I started experimenting with Flash to see if I could come up with something better looking. I’m so happy with the initial results I decided to post them here. Both the movie and the plugin itself need loads of work, but please feel free to tell me how you like it so far.
P.S. The tag cloud displayed by the movie is this site’s actual ‘live’ tag cloud, and yes, if you manage to click a tag the page for that tag will open… 
P.P.S. You can download the plugin here.
Visually I think it’s very cool! But my problem with this app (and with most scrolling flash photo indexes) is when it speeds uup and out of control. It sometimes becomes a cursor-balancing act to click on the tag (or photo) you are interested in.
Comment by YaWie — March 7, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
Wow this looks very good! I like this idea of tag cloud. You should fix speeding problem and if it is possible to change background to transparent(more people will have oportunity to add tag cloud to their blog without destroying whole design).
Good Job
Comment by wojcieh — March 8, 2008 @ 4:11 pm
The speed is definitely something I’ll have to look into, and transparency is also high on my list. As is the ability to change the display size.
If I do make this transparent though, I’ll have to make the text color adjustable as well to accommodate both dark and light background themes.
Comment by Roy — March 9, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
I found it great, I just dugg it. Good luck and congratulations!!!
Best regards,
http://justtellmewhy.com
Comment by Cristian Eslava — March 13, 2008 @ 9:09 pm
Sweet…
Comment by Richard — March 14, 2008 @ 5:40 am
…and oh, are you planning to release it to the public?
Comment by Richard — March 14, 2008 @ 5:53 am
I plan to release this sometime this month, but there really are a few pesky things I need to iron out before it’s ready, so please hang in there…
Comment by Roy — March 14, 2008 @ 10:57 am
I’m hanging in… =)
Comment by Richard — March 14, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
[...] works exactly like a normal WordPress plugin, only with some nice effects for the tag navigation. A fully functional demo can be seen on the Roy Tanck’s blog, as well as the plugin download [...]
Pingback by Flash based Tag Cloud WordPress plugin | Blogsessive — March 16, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
Hey! I love the cumulus and I’m testing it within my wordpress, bud sadly I experience problems while using Polish diacritic signs. Namely, letters like ą ę ć etc. are not visible at all
Please tell me whether it has something to do with the plugin itself of rather if comes from my Polish Wordpress installation.
Kind regards
Grian
Comment by Grian — March 18, 2008 @ 3:16 pm
Hi Grain. This is an unfortunate side effect caused by the way Flash handles fonts. In order to be able to animate the tags smoothly, I have to specify which characters I want to include in the movie. Adding all would make the movie far to big for use in web pages, so the current version has all the Latin characters.
There’s a full list of options on this page.
Contact me if you’d like to help test other language versions. I can whip up a version with the Cyrillic character set for instance for you to try.
Comment by Roy — March 18, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Hi again! I appreciate your fast reply
Polish diacritic characters are within the “Latin Extended A” (not Cyrillic) range of signs. I would be really happy to see how the Cumulus works for the range of signs…
Please let me know if it’s still possible for you to try with the “Latin Extended A” set.
Waiting to try it out!
Best regards,
Grian
Comment by Grian — March 18, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
[...] nombre es WP-Cumulus, flash based tag cloud y podéis verlo en acción en el blog de su creador Roy Tranck, desde la que también podréis descargar este atractivo [...]
Pingback by Nubes de conceptos en flash | El caparazón — March 19, 2008 @ 6:48 am
[...] qu’un nuage de tags classique. Vous pourrez voir ici une version de démonstration sur le blog de Tank Roy, et vous pourrrez télécharger Wp Cumulus [...]
Pingback by Wordpress Cumulus - Plugin pour un nuage de tags en flash — April 1, 2008 @ 1:06 pm
Cool WP Plugins, but I can’t use since I still use 2.2.3 version, could you re-compile it in order to compatible with 2.2.x version?
Best Regards.
Comment by Entrepreneur Indonesia — April 2, 2008 @ 7:00 pm
@Entrepreneur: WordPress 2.2 didn’t have native tag support, so there’s really no way for this plugin to function in versions before 2.3.
Comment by Roy — April 2, 2008 @ 7:30 pm
[...] little while ago I posted a Flash based tag cloud frontend here that was hoping to convert into a plugin for WordPress. I had some time on my hands tonight, [...]
Pingback by Blog » essai 1 — April 3, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
[...] to suite your WordPress theme. You will be surprise. You can see the WP Culumus tag cloud in action here to believe [...]
Pingback by Flash Based Tag Cloud Replacement | WING LOON — April 12, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
[...] WP Cumulus这个插件可以你的标签不再是标签云那样大小来显示,而是利用flash让你的标签可以到处移动.这里有一个Demo,下面只是一个静态图片. [...]
Pingback by 用Flash滚动的方式来显示你的tag | 博客Sir — April 13, 2008 @ 3:26 pm
[...] Se instalează foarte uşor, poate fi modificat şi integrat uşor în blog şi lucrează exact ca tag cloud-ul normal din WordPress, deosebirea fiind în efectele ce apar în timp ce navighezi printre tag-uri. Un demo 100% funcţional îl poţi vedea accesînd acest link. [...]
Pingback by Te Plicteseşte Tag Cloud-ul Existent? Instaleaza Flash Tag Cloud! | ProBloggerMD — April 14, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
Wow! This looks really exciting. I am very curious how this will be worked out further! Thanks for sharing this with the world.
Comment by Benjamin — April 15, 2008 @ 11:03 pm
Good job there!
I really like it.
I’m downloading it and hope it works great on my website.
Thanks.
wgn_white
Comment by wgn_white — April 17, 2008 @ 2:05 pm
[...] Pour le multimedia : WP - Simple Viewer et/ou NextGEN Gallery (galeries photos), Deezer monotitre (musique), Vipers Video Quicktags (video) et pour le fun un plugin générant un nuage de tags très psychédélique en flash : WP Cumulus. [...]
Pingback by Référencement d’un blog WordPress : les plugins utiles — April 22, 2008 @ 1:21 pm
[...] для вордпресса, с помощью которого можно сделать красивое 3д облако тегов. Русская [...]
Pingback by Потерянные буквы | Передовой журнал Евгения Киселева — April 24, 2008 @ 8:16 pm
[...] 动画效果地址：http://www.roytanck.com/2008/03/06/wordpress-plugin-wp-cumulus-flash-based-tag-cloud/#comment-19745 [...]
Pingback by WordPress Flash 动态标签插件 WP Cumulus 1.02 | 新手网 imnewer.cn — April 25, 2008 @ 8:21 am
i’m drooling.
really looking forward to this!
Comment by casey — April 29, 2008 @ 9:37 pm
hi, mi problem is: “WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 7 or bette”. What can I do?
I’m using wp 2.5.1
Many thanks
Comment by mimmo — April 30, 2008 @ 7:31 am
This plugin cause a big problem on IE 6 with wordpress 2.3.2…so I loved it, but I must abandonn it! pffff
Comment by bibliobsession — April 30, 2008 @ 9:40 am
[...] sphere looks better as you increase the size, see both the screenshot below and on the author’s site. I’ve inquired about how to call the plugin with custom options to make it appear larger on the [...]
Pingback by WordPress Plugin: Cumulus - 3D Globe Tag Cloud » Eli Foner — May 3, 2008 @ 11:39 pm
Howdy;
im not a big coding nose, but i try it, because;
its looking brilliant.
But maybee thats my mistake: thats dont works for me . .
Comment by Pierro — May 4, 2008 @ 6:32 am
[...] nombre es WP-Cumulus, flash based tag cloud y podéis verlo en acción en el blog de su creador Roy Tranck, desde la que también podréis descargar este atractivo [...]
Pingback by Planeta Web Semántica » Blog Archive » Nubes de conceptos en flash — May 11, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
Really great plugin, thank you!
Could you please add an optional parameter to stop the cloud movement when the mouse is out of focus?
Comment by Jay — May 14, 2008 @ 8:52 am
Hi Jay. That’s actually a little more tricky than you might think. When the mouse leaves that Flash movie, the last known position is reported to actionscript, so there’s no way of telling whether it has left the movie or not. I’ll look inoto this for future versions, but don’t get your hopes up…
Comment by Roy — May 14, 2008 @ 9:15 am
I’m not a Flash expert, but what are the initial values of the mouse cursor reported by ActionScript when the cursor did not focus the Flash movie so far?
Furthermore, when leaving the movie, the cursor has to cross at least one of the borders of it, so couldn’t you just check against the appropriate border values to determine if the movie has focus?
For example, when the cursor hits the left side of the movie, the last known position to be reported should be 0 for the X axis.
Comment by Jay — May 15, 2008 @ 2:03 pm
Hi Jay, If you move the mouse at regular speeds, the last x-coord reported will probably be somewhere between 0 and say 20. If you move very quickly it might even be as high as 50. I’ll have to look into gradually reducing mouse influence as you get further away fro the center, but this might be tricky to do because currently it works just the other way around (the further from the center, then more speed).
Comment by Roy — May 15, 2008 @ 2:07 pm