Why? I have been using the tag cloud to give visitors to my profile page an overview over the stuff that I do research on. This has been popular and I have been asked by a couple people how I did this. (The mac users among this group were thus often made aware of Bookends.) But it would be even more wonderful, engaging and enlightening – both for me and for people wanting to get an idea about my research – if it were possible to see an animated tag cloud.
What should the animation show? My main idea is that it should act as a kind of timeline, that shows how the tag cloud changes over time. Some keywords would get bigger, others shrink or disappear as the focus of research moves. This would also be great for research groups, to show their progress over time etc.
As stated above, this would be both entertaining and give completely new insight to how research develops over time.
This feature could of course be enhanced over time, giving access to different kinds of content, using different kinds of criteria instead of keyword or time, etc. One challenge regarding the timeline would of course be the starting date (I have the year 1904 as a default value for some of my old entries) but this could also be worked around.
This is of course not at all a basic or necessary feature. But as Bookends has evolved to its current, already really refined state, I thought that maybe, just maybe, Jon likes a new challenge (now with the switch to cocoa etc. in box, he certainly must have loads of time at his hand, sitting in front of his machine, twiddling his thumbs, waiting for the occasional support request to finally get into motion, etc.)
