### Cloud Options:

jQCloud accepts an object containing configurations for the whole cloud as the second argument:

```javascript
$("#example").jQCloud(word_list, {
width: 300,
height: 200
});
```

All cloud-wide configurations are optional, and the full list of available options is the following:

* **width** (number): The width of the word cloud container element. Defaults to the original width.
* **height** (number): The height of the word cloud container element. Defaults to the original height.
* **center** (object): The x and y coordinates of the center of the word cloud, relative to the container element (e.g.: {x: 300, y: 150}). Defaults to the center of the container element.
* **afterCloudRender** (function): A callback function to be called after the whole cloud is fully rendered.
* **delayedMode** (boolean): If true, words are rendered one after another with a tiny delay between each one. This prevents freezing of the browser when there are many words to be rendered. If false, the cloud will be rendered in one single shot. By default, delayedMode is true when there are more than 50 words.
* **shape** (string): the shape of the cloud. By default it is elliptic, but it can be set to `"rectangular"` to draw a rectangular-shaped cloud.
* **removeOverflowing** (boolean): If true, it removes words that would overflow the container. Defaults to true.

## Custom CSS guidelines

The word cloud produced by jQCloud is made of pure HTML, so you can style it using CSS. When you call `$("#example").jQCloud(...)`, the containing element is given a CSS class of "jqcloud", allowing for easy CSS targeting. The included CSS file `jqcloud.css` is intended as an example and as a base on which to develop your own custom style, defining dimensions and appearance of words in the cloud. When writing your custom CSS, just follow these guidelines:

* Always specify the dimensions of the container element (div.jqcloud in jqcloud.css).
* The CSS attribute 'position' of the container element must be explicitly declared and different from 'static' (if it is 'static', jQCloud overwrites it to 'relative').
* Specifying the style of the words (color, font, dimension, etc.) is super easy: words are wrapped in `` tags with ten levels of importance corresponding to the following classes (in descending order of importance): w10, w9, w8, w7, w6, w5, w4, w3, w2, w1.

## v1.0 and backward compatibility

Please note that version 1.0 is a redesign of the API that does not maintain backward compatibility. Version 1.0 simplifies the API while enabling more control, but pay attention because simply upgrading jQCloud from 0.x to 1.0 in an existing project would probably break it.

### Changes from v0.2 to v1.0

This is a quick list of what changed in the new 1.0 API:

## Examples

Just have a look at the examples directory provided in the project or see a [demo here](http://www.lucaongaro.eu/demos/jqcloud/).

## Gallery

Some creative examples of jQCloud use are:

* http://www.geekgrade.com/ uses jQCloud for its "Top Geeks Twitter Trends" feature
* [Google Docs Tag Cloud Generator](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tag-cloud-generator/alhnlhbhnklajhmccemipdbaifocepab?authuser=0) is a Google Docs plugin that generates clouds from your documents
* http://www.politickerusa.com/trends/ uses jQCloud to show trends in US politicians' tweets.
* http://www.turtledome.com/noisy/ shows you which of the people you follow on Twitter tweets the most.

If you happen to use jQCloud in your projects, you can make me know (just contact me on [my website](http://www.lucaongaro.eu)): I'd be happy to add a link in the 'gallery', so that other people can take inspiration from it.

## Contribute

Contributes are welcome! To setup your build environment, make sure you have Ruby installed, as well as the `rake` and `erb` gems. Then, to build jQCloud, run:

```
rake build
```

The newly-built distribution files will be put in the `jqcloud` subdirectory.

If you make changes to the JavaScript source, to the README, to examples or to tests, make them to .erb files in the `src` subdirectory: changes will be reflected in the distribution files as soon as you build jQCloud. Also, if you send me a pull request, please don't change the version.txt file.

## Changelog

1.0.4 Add option to remove overflowing words (thanks to [drewB](https://github.com/drewB))

1.0.3 Fix bug when providing a context to jQuery

1.0.2 Relative font sizes and easier to customize CSS (kudos to [daniel-toman](https://github.com/daniel-toman))

1.0.1 Option to turn off URL encoding for links (thanks to [bboughton](https://github.com/bboughton))

1.0.0 API redesign (warning: this is a major update, and background compatibility is not maintained)

0.2.10 Fix bug occurring when the container element has no id

0.2.9 Add dataAttributes option (thanks again to [cham](https://github.com/cham)) and fix bug when weights are all equal (thanks to [Grepsy](https://github.com/Grepsy))

0.2.8 Add possibility to specify custom classes for words with the custom_class attribute (thanks to [cham](https://github.com/cham))

0.2.7 Add possibility to draw rectangular-shaped clouds (an idea by [nithin2e](https://github.com/nithin2e))

0.2.6 Fix bug with handlers, add nofollow option (thanks to [strobotta](https://github.com/strobotta)) and word callbacks.

0.2.5 Add possibility to bind event handlers to words (thanks to [astintzing](https://github.com/astintzing))

0.2.4 Option randomClasses can be an array of classes among which a random class is selected for each word

0.2.3 Add option randomClasses, allowing for random CSS styling (inspired by issue about vertical words opened by [tttp](https://github.com/tttp))

0.2.2 CSS improvements (as suggested by [NomikOS](https://github.com/NomikOS))

0.2.1 Optimization and performance improvements (making 0.2.1 around 25% faster than 0.2.0)

0.2.0 Add configuration options, passed as the second argument of jQCloud (include ideas proposed by [mindscratch](https://github.com/mindscratch) and [aaaa0441](https://github.com/aaaa0441))

0.1.8 Fix bug in the algorithm causing sometimes unbalanced layouts (thanks to [isamochernov](https://github.com/isamochernov))