D3.js started as/still is just a (collection of) JS libraries. Then Observable came along, and while it is a nice tool for tinkering with D3, it was not at all obvious how to then move your finished Observable D3 viz to a fully self-hosted, regular website (without paying a subscription to use their custom runtime or servers or whatever).
Now I guess they realize they strayed way too far from "the web" and are back-tracking.
The build tool is open source and unlike a Jupyter notebook, it’s easy to edit without a custom editor. So you don’t need their editor, but it will still be nicer to edit with their editor.
FWIW, the HTML custom elements spec does require a hyphen: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom-elements.html#...
Is Notebook 2.0 just a HTML subset that starts with e.g. <notebook> instead of <html>?
Then what's the notebook kit npm package?
Then there's an editor?
I've come away from the page a little irritated, because starts with hyperbole like "the future of notebooks is here", and then the "hello world" in the new notebook 2.0 format looks like HTML, and a video of what could have just been a generic AI chat window.
Maybe I'm too hungry/tired to make sense of it right now. Will be interesting to read what others think.
It's a neat tool that solves a lot of specific sharing/visualization problems (think of newsroom data analysis).
I like observable but I hate how much it feels like the service has been taken over by product managers looking for that next bump.
Looks like this is still true with the new system:
> The Build API analyzes cell source code to find unbound references, such that the appropriate variable graph can be initialized using the Observable Runtime. For non-JavaScript cells (such as Markdown, HTML, and SQL), the Build API also transpiles the source into a tagged template literal expression.
This is unlike other document formats. They made the cells look like standard JavaScript now (versus the JavaScript variant they had before) but the file format is necessarily different, because the execution model is different. There is a build step to ensure that the cells will be executed in the right order on page load.
It was a bunmer to not be able to copy paste code from my projects into observable. With local notebooks I see more potential for homegrown workflow but for me the benefit was always the platform and how starting a new thing was as simple as going to a webpage and clicking plus.
Anyways excited to play with this once it ends up in the online editor
These data viz are great dashboard builders but need a local/offline solution for my needs.
And this is the take they published to sell the thing!
But if anything would change my opinion this has the right set of values
I'm not familiar enough with Python or Jupyter to know how you would build similar visualizations with them. What would you use?
I work at Google and my UXR colleagues are more comfortable with Python than JS, so we use Google Colab, but I'd use Observable if those weren't true.
On the other hand, I don’t know if Observable Notebooks 2.0 even does incremental builds anymore? If not, it’s just about presentation order, similar to literate programming.
Observable Framework had data loaders for creating static snapshots of data at build time. I don’t see any mention of how to handle data loading in Observable Notebooks 2.0.
That rambling aside, I like the idea of having a desktop app. Not sure where this notebook fits in with all their other products. They have the Framework which is actually pretty useful.
They do get paid. Observable sells team and enterprise licenses: https://observablehq.com/pricing
Any timeline on bringing the new format to the Web editor? For me, the biggest draw of Observable is being able to instantly start exploring and visualizing some data without ANY setup (creating some local files, installing dependencies, launching a dev server etc.) — just click "New notebook" and off you go, frictionless. I hope this remains a priority.
Also worth mentioning the data viz community aspect, which I used to enjoy a ton — it's a bummer that things like being able to follow certain users and see their new notebooks in a feed were phased out, and that trending notebooks are now hidden under the Help menu instead of being featured on the user's homepage. This might be one of the reasons I stopped coming back to the platform as often, although I realize building a community is very difficult and hard to monetize — just thought I'd share.
For the time being I hacked something using Observable Framework [1], but still, it isn't the full set
1: https://observablehq.com/framework/
Edit: nvm just saw the notebook kit
I've seen and used so many amazing in-house dashboarding and reporting tools, and this suite blows them all out of the water. Can't believe this is all open source too.
I think this is a great way to slice up the product/feature set from a monetization perspective: hosting w/ collaboration is paid, but the tools are all free to use.
HAVE FUN TESTING THAT. And when you don't, enjoy random countries being mixed up but it mostly working.
chaps•12h ago