The plugin itself is very lightweight, only a few rows of code. There are two major “functions” which make everything alive: the initialization part sets the timer of the JavaScript engine to a specified frame rate; you can change this value by passing the frameRate variable to the plugin at instantiation. In the next step the plugin binds the mouse movement event to the parent object. The naming may be a little misleading, but it’s trying to say to which object the floating box should be bound to. There is another variable I would like to clarify: the stage. Usually the parent and the stage are the same. But if you want your box float in a different “co-ordinate system” other than the parent’s you have the possibility to do so, just provide a new stage. Back to the mouse event. When the event occurs, the code checks the position of the mouse within the parent object (so NOT the absolute coordinates).

This plugin will create a animated tag cloud out of the list of tags for your blog/site. It is based upon the jQuery framework. Although there are many tag cloud available in jQuery Plugin arsenal, I really felt the need to create this one. The plugin include font animation as well as tag animation in three ways (horizontal, vertical and random). The animation will stop when user mouse over on the tag cloud, restarts after sometime after mouse out. Very easy to implement and customize. You just need to write a simple line apply it on the <div> or <ul> containing list of tags.

See online demo | Download Tag Cloud Plugin

A while back I debuted a tasteful mouseover/mouseout technique called link nudging. It started with a MooTools version and shortly thereafter a jQuery version. Just recently Drew Douglass premiered a jQuery plugin that aimed at producing the same type of effect. I’ve taken some time to put together my own version of the jQuery nudging plugin.