Tag clouds: Are there any in either flash or javascript

Question

Hi,

I would like to display tagcloud in my home page. Found this wordpress flash plugin http://alexisyes.com/tags/wpcumulus , but for that i needed to setup wordpress. I am wondering whether there is any other standalone plugin similar to wpcumulus which can be configurable.

I don't want to install wordpress but i would like to make use of wpcumulus. Is it possible? If not wpcumulus, could i make use of any other standalone tag clouds.

Just curious, i came across all tag clouds which were implemented in either flash or flex. Can i get the demo link/plugin which has implemented the same in javascript.

Thanks, ~shafi

Answer 1

You could definitely use wpcumulus (I just downloaded it and checked it out). You just have to figure out what data it needs to create a tag cloud.

First, you need to download the swf and add it to your site. You can take a look of an installed version / demo of it to see the proper swf embed html.

Next, you have to figure out how it gets its data. The quickest way I think to do this is to go to a demo of wpcumulus and look at the http requests / responses going on. I use the Live Http Headers plugin for Firefox for this. It will probably look for a xml file that's set in its swf embed code. I'm guessing the xml might look something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<tags>
    <tag name="Books" count="4" />
    <tag name="Magazines" count="20" />
    <!-- etc... -->
</tags>

Now you just need to create an xml file that includes that data. You could either make it a static xml file, or use php or asp.net to create a dynamic page that produces xml.

Answer 2

Thanks a lot for your quick response.

Can i change the content of tag cloud from time to time, for eg: for every 5 mins. Lets say the links on the server side get updated for every 5 mins. In that case, is it possible with wpcumulus to display the latest content. If so, how can i achieve that? Thinking of sending an ajax request and get the new content, but how can i re-render the flash object after i have got the new data from server.

Regards, ~Shafi

Answer 3

In other words, I would like to have 'auto-refresh' functionality for the tag cloud. Can it be done?

Answer 4

Please download BlogCumulus.Net for BlogEngine.Net platform from 99atoms.com. It will give you complete idea about how you can use it in .Net. Similarly for PHP read this page about using it in Drupal

Actually you don't need to give it full xml file but a string of format:

<tags>
<a href="#" title="C#" style="..." class="..">C#</a>
.............
...............
</tags>

I think the size of the tag comes from class attribute in <a>. You can use swfobject.js to generate the mark-up for inserting the flash object into the page.