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.
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better.
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
[...] Demo: Roytanck.com [...]
Pingback by Wordpress Flash Tag Cloud | AktifBlog.com - Çirkin kadın yoktur az votka vardır — May 17, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
[...] Un des seuls inconvénients que je voit à ce plugin serait la difficulté à choper les plus petits tags quand ils tournent.. De plus, le plugin n’étant disponible qu’en une seule version sur fond noir, il ne conviendra pas pour tous les blogs (pas au mien par exemple) mais on peut quand même saluer le talent de son concepteur, Roy Tank (lien vers une démo sur son blog). [...]
Pingback by Redpeppers - Jean baptiste Audras - Blog d'un webmaster/webdesigner étudiant en master communicaton à Grenoble » Plugin Wordpress Cumulus : un nuage de tags qui tourne sur lui même ! — May 18, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
[...] http://www.roytanck.com/2008/03/06/wordpress-plugin-wp-cumulus-flash-based-tag-cloud/ [...]
Pingback by Janine Healy » Blog Archive » Flash Tag Cloud - Not working! — May 20, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
Wow, thats a great plugin, I was searching for the same feature all around the web, and breadcrumbs have brought me here. I m really happy to see this great piece of art, ( programming beneath ) but as mesmerised I am , at the same time a little sad as well as this is a wordpress plugin. I want to use it on my html site. I dont want dynamic tags but the option to add static tags/ categories with links to site pages. Ofcourse I want the same look and animation, for its marvellous. Please see if you can do it for me, and many others who will surely appreciate it.
In return I can provide you backlinks from a search engine i.e http://www.nxtsearch.com, and many sites and directories. If you want i can pay you as well but that cant be a large sum as i cant afford much.
Please do reply and guide me to achieve the same.
Comment by Nishkrant — May 20, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
Hi Nishkrant. I actually wrote a post a few days ago about this. Please see this post.
Comment by Roy — May 20, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
Love it
Looks great on Firefox on my Mac
Been told only a black screen on IE
Is there something else to put on my server to help Flash load on IE or is this really the 2006 Direct X flash ‘thingy’ problem on IE where the user needs to deal with his or her own IE issues concerning Flash and how IE now deals with flash start up
your my only hope Obiwankenobi
Comment by Howard — May 25, 2008 @ 11:40 pm
Hi Howard. There really is no reason why it shouldn’t work on IE. It definitely does on PC. But this is one of the reasons I use SWFObject to embed the Flash movie. It deals with all this stuff without me having to worry about it. I myself can only test on a couple of browsers, and all of them are PC-based.
Comment by Roy — May 26, 2008 @ 8:33 am
looking at http://theflashblog.com/?p=246
Appears to be different thoughts on how to do this
like the SWFFix etc
have a look
your my only hope Obiwankenobi
Comment by Howard — May 27, 2008 @ 3:24 pm
Hi Howard. All of those solutions have pretty much culminated in SWFObject. I am unable to test in IE on Mac (and why would you ever use IE on a Mac?).
Comment by Roy — May 27, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
[...] l’image de Cumulus [en], un plugin pour wordpress qui permettait d’afficher un nuage de tags dynamique et animé [...]
Pingback by Redpeppers - Jean baptiste Audras - Blog d'un webmaster/webdesigner étudiant en master communicaton à Grenoble » Tag Galaxie : une visualisation “spatiale” des images publiées sur Flickr — May 28, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
Great Work, love the plugin…
Comment by Gabor — May 29, 2008 @ 11:04 am
tooo cooooll!
I love resizing and changing the background!
Comment by danielmcvicar — May 30, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
I love it, I put it on my site, but with explorer it doesn’t work … WhY? I did something wrong?
Comment by Mattia — June 5, 2008 @ 1:28 pm
Hey,
I’m using your tag cloud on a new website and have 2 questions…
1. I have it running in the sidebar at 500 width 350 height. I would like to keep that ratio but make the font size smaller on the higher end.
2. Is there a way to change the border effect to a different color effect on mouse over?
You can have a look at my site if that helps…
http://anonymouspond.com/
Thanks!
To answer a question above…
I use IE on a Mac through VMware for testing and for some reason it disables Flash and SWFObject . That could be why you’re not seeing the cloud. You may have to trust that non-Mac users of IE do indeed see it.
Comment by Pierrot — June 6, 2008 @ 1:27 am
Thanks for the answer, but I’m a non-Mac user and with IE I can’t see it … This is my site http://lnx.mattiafumagalli.com/
Comment by Mattia — June 6, 2008 @ 12:17 pm
@Mattia: There are a considerable number of coding errors on your blog. I ran it through the W3C validator, and some of these errors are quite severe, to the point where they mess up the document’s structure. This can cause SWFObject to fail. I suggest you look into this. If fixing the errors does not make the plugin show, please drop me an email.
@Pierrot: As far as I can tell, IE on the Mac is extinct. The newest version is 5, released in 2003, which basically is ancient history. To be quite frank, I’d not exprect any current website to work in it, let alone a plugin like this.
1. If you open up the plugin’s PHP file, you’ll se a call the WordPress’ wp_tag_cloud function. This function accepts a lot of parameters, but for the plugin the parameters string is empty. Feel free to specifiy the minimum and maximum font sizes if you like (and are confortable editing PHP files).
2. The highlight effect is included in the swf file, so the only way to change this is to have me make a custom version for you.
Comment by Roy — June 6, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
[...] gampang kok… Tinggal download pluginnya disini…. Trus upload pluginnya ke hostingan trus aktifin pluginnya trus jadi deh tag cloud [...]
Pingback by Tag Cloud Muter-muter…. | RoraBlitz — June 11, 2008 @ 7:46 am
wow, thx for this super cool plugins, im using in at my blog
thx !!!
Comment by Supermance — June 28, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
It is cool!
Comment by Chars Lee — July 2, 2008 @ 10:10 am
[...] Demo: Roytanck.com [...]
Pingback by TurkAtesi.oRg ~ Internetin En Cix Mekanı » Blog Archive » Wordpress Flash Tag Eklentisi — July 2, 2008 @ 3:18 pm
[...] Download and watch it in live action at: Flash based tag cloud frontend [...]
Pingback by A Plugin to Show Tag Clouds in Animated Flash | Thinkweird's Blog — July 3, 2008 @ 7:01 am
[...] Enough chat.. head over to his post to demo the plug-in now [...]
Pingback by Blog2Life » WP Cumulus: Interactive Flash Tag Cloud — July 4, 2008 @ 7:32 pm
. .
Comment by http://remont-komplekt.ru/ — July 5, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
[...] WordPress plugin: WP-Cumulus Flash based tag cloud | Roy Tanck’s weblog (tags: wordpress plugin tag flash) [...]
Pingback by My Del.icio.us — July 6, 2008 @ 4:32 am
wow this is amazing… how did you do that? do you think you could give me the code, or give me some help in making my own?
Comment by Luke — July 9, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
Hi Luke: Drop me an email. I’ll see what I can do.
Comment by Roy — July 10, 2008 @ 2:23 pm
Brilliant plugin, thanks
Comment by Noelia — July 11, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
Just a thought, you should make your flash tag cloud navigation for the site (on the right) the same background color as the left side so it blends in (the yellowish color). That would look really cool as it would seem to be integrated with the page instead of a loaded flash movie, I think.
Comment by Luke — July 14, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
[...] What he does 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 him. This why he started experimenting with Flash to see if he could come up with something better looking. » Knowtelink [...]
Pingback by Flash Tag Cloud For Wordpress Rocks da House « Inspiration, coding « Knowtebook - Webworkers Daily Dosis — July 15, 2008 @ 2:23 pm
Very nice. I’m interested in integrating this Flash cloudfile in another content management system. Do you have additional information about how feeding the flash with the tags (whoich format, xml)?
I’m not very familiar with Wordpress …
Thanks in advance,
Peter.
Comment by Peter — July 16, 2008 @ 9:49 am
Hi Peter. There’s some info here: http://www.roytanck.com/2008/05/19/how-to-repurpose-my-tag-cloud-flash-movie/ . It really is quite simple.
I’m working on a new version, so the info on that page might need some updating soon.
Comment by Roy — July 16, 2008 @ 10:51 am
[...] Önizleme: http://www.roytanck.com/2008/03/06/w…sed-tag-cloud/ [...]
Pingback by Wordpress Flash Tag Cloud Yapımı | MysticaL_DeviL # WebBoX — July 18, 2008 @ 10:12 pm