Dr. Dobb's Journal - January 2008 - (Page 24) d01jurg_p6db 11/8/07 11:19 AM Page 24 Core Technology TAG CLOUDS: USABILITY AND MATH Figure 3: Normal distributions colleagues by making your HTML generator compatible with several of the techniques mentioned. This also applies to the context in which hyperlinks are placed. Some solutions use HTML for enumerating the text tags; others use spaces to separate them from each other. A UI designer might want other properties of the hyperlinks (such as the intensity of the color) to vary with the weight of the tags. A good UI control will not stand in the way of any creative ideas! One last bit of advice: Consider that any spaces in tags (like in names of authors) can be replaced by while rendering the HTML. This saves front-end developers the effort of taking measures against undesirable wrapping of the tags. A good UI control will not stand in the way of any creative ideas Conclusion To sum up, there are different types of data that can serve as data sources for tag clouds and you can apply different algorithms to distribute font sizes more evenly among tag clouds. Using this information, you can build a generic solution in your own favorite environment that is applicable in many different situations. Hopefully, I will encounter some of your results the next time I am searching for good solutions. DDJ Figure 4: Pareto distributions. I/O Controls x x x x x High-Speed for Real-Time applications Built-In custom Property Editors Automatic and Custom Sizing. No Restrictive Bitmaps Look and Feel of Real Hardware Includes : Switches, Gauges, Sliders, Led’s, Led Bar, Led Spiral, Integer/Binary/Hexadecimal Displays, Tanks, Valves, Motors, LCD Matrix, Spectrum Display, Percent and Pie Graph, Odometers, Analog Clock, Image Display, Rotation Display, and Mode Combo Box. Plot Control x x x x x x x x High-Speed for Real-Time applications Unlimited Number of Channels & Axes Full Customizable External Toolbar Legends, Tables, Limits, Labels, Annotations, Cursors Gradient Backgrounds Log Files and Data Export and Import Save images to BMP, PNG, JPEG, TIF, GIF and EMF Many built in channel types : Tracy, Trace-XY, Bar, Bubble, Fill, Bi-Fill, Digital, Differential and Sweep Interval (EKG) Std Pack .Net x 28 Controls x Basic I/O Controls ActiveX & VCL Also Available Pro Pack .Net x 55 Controls x Basic & Advanced I/O Controls Single Developer : $1099 Additional Developer : $379 ActiveX & VCL Also Available Plot Pack .Net x Plotting : Scientific, Engineering, Strip-Chart, Digital, EKG, and more ActiveX & VCL Also Available Ultra Pack .Net x 56 Controls x Basic & Advanced I/O Controls plus Plotting Single Developer : $1699 Additional Developer : $579 ActiveX & VCL Also Available Single Developer : $559 Additional Developer : $189 Single Developer : $859 Additional Developer : $289 www.iocomp.com 888-599-2929 +1-407-226-3456 7081 Grand National Drive Suite 112, Orlando, FL 32819 24 Dr. Dobb’s Journal l www.ddj.com l January 2008 http://www.iocomp.com http://www.iocomp.com http://www.ddj.com
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