{"id":328,"date":"2006-02-03T22:19:27","date_gmt":"2006-02-04T06:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/03\/things-i-dont-get-tag-clouds\/"},"modified":"2006-02-03T22:19:27","modified_gmt":"2006-02-04T06:19:27","slug":"things-i-dont-get-tag-clouds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/03\/things-i-dont-get-tag-clouds\/","title":{"rendered":"Things I don’t get: Tag clouds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something that’s mystified me of late is the popularity of tag clouds. Why do people like them? Don’t they realize they’re ugly? Or perhaps no one really likes them, everyone just thinks someone else likes them.<\/p>\n

Let’s take an example tag cloud, a strange mishmash of oddly-sized words that look like a 12-year old just discovered the HTML font tag:
\n<\/p>\n

\"tagcloud\"<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

What is this trying to say? Someone looking at this for the first time would have no clue why some of these words are bigger than others and why they’re in alphabetical order. Instead, let’s try something like this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. google<\/li>\n
  2. microsoft<\/li>\n
  3. blog<\/li>\n
  4. apple<\/li>\n
  5. open source<\/li>\n
  6. scientists<\/li>\n
  7. intel<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    etc..<\/p>\n

    That’s pretty clear that this is a list of popular terms and they even line up nicely. Boring? Maybe. But I’ll take clarity over silly design fads anyday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Something that’s mystified me of late is the popularity of tag clouds. Why do people like them? Don’t they realize they’re ugly? Or perhaps no one really likes them, everyone just thinks someone else likes them. Let’s take an example tag cloud, a strange mishmash of oddly-sized words that look like a 12-year old just …<\/p>\n

    Continue reading ‘Things I don’t get: Tag clouds’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boulter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}