I know everyone, at least once in his blogging life, installed WP Cumulus, the worldwide known plugin showing a shiny 3D tag cloud. In fact, nearly no one has eve used dimple javascript to create somethin like this, mostly because it seems to be quite useles, but also because, beside this, ther’s really near no need for this kind of objects.

if yout blog really needs this kind of applet, well, it doesn’t really matters wether it is a 3d javascript object or a flash movie.

The only odd in the mentioned plugin is that you loose SEO opportunities, so, if you really, really, really, really want to try such thing, i’ve just come with a nearly fully functional  HTML only version of tht object. Just create your usual <ul><li> assign them the specific class (I’ll give you a hint… “tagcloud”) and call the proper constructor… on the mouseover all of youtr cloud will start to move around your layer.
There’s of course place to soo many customisazione, and the 3D functions that I’m using are still not perfect, so, if you come with a better version than mine, please let me know.

Update: after 6 onths from the original post, this is still the most visited btween all the other [5] post composing this blog. It makes me wonder if a javascript 3d library would be wellcome. something like a Prototype class or evena Jquery UI class… with a bit of tweaking and a little amount of css programming real fake 3d GUI elements could be created…

In the [real little] spare time I can give to this blog, I will try to create such library.

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4 Responses to “A Javascript 3D Tag Cloud”

  1. i dont getr it

  2. just download the package [click on 'mine' link in the end of the original post] and try it… if you need help, just ask!

  3. to be honest, you are the one, really. but movingng around cloud make me feel dizzy,how about just like what wp cumulus does.

  4. I agree with you: ‘ve just got some problems with 3D transformations for elements… i need to tweak formulas: I already tried cumulus-like ones, but singe we’re not moving in a real 3d environment everything gets a little complicated

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