Jupyter Notebook 5.0 beta 1

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Thomas Kluyver

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Feb 15, 2017, 10:11:30 AM2/15/17
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Hi all,

I've just released the first beta for Jupyter Notebook 5.0. Please try it out and let us know about any bugs. You can install it using:

pip install --upgrade --pre notebook

There isn't a headline big new feature in 5.0, but rather a range of new features and improvements. You can read about some of them here:
http://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html

Thanks,
Thomas

Yuvi Panda

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Feb 15, 2017, 12:40:21 PM2/15/17
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Congratulations, Thomas and others who worked on this release! <3
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Tony Hirst

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Feb 16, 2017, 2:22:30 PM2/16/17
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Looking at the notes - We encourage users to start trying JupyterLab in preparation for a future transition  - I have a question re: the roadmap:

- will Jupyter notebooks continue to be available as such once Jupyterlab is available? (could a jupyterlab instance be configured to just mimic a simple notebook UI, for example)
- will Jupyterhub continue to supplort multiuser deployment of Jupyter notebooks?

One of the attractions of Jupyter notebooks in education and for supporting use of code outside computing discipline is that the notebook interface is relatively simple and friendly without all the sidebar chrome and menus and features and tools and stuff that make IDEs a terrifying experience for most people. I'm keen to be able to keep using a simple clean interface from the off with students and nontechies.

I'm lobbying my institution to make notebooks available locally, a process that will take 3-6 months to get deployed and then be expected to not change much for a chunk of time. What should I be lobbying for?! I'm pitching for novices to be able to access simple notebook UIs without any need for too many features in the first instance.

(eg if/when nteract ships with a bundled kernel, I can see it being great for use with this user community (even more so if the ability to launch temporary or multiuser nteract instances from a remote instituional server accessed via a browser).)

By way of trying to express my general concerns, as opposed to just being critical of the new... Looking at things like RStudio, it used to be relatively simple... but as it gets richer features and more powerful tools, and experts who've grown with it just have to keep up with it, and maybe also demand more of it as they get more expert/professional, it just gets more complicated and scary for novices coming to it for the first time. Sometimes less is more. The on-ramp needs to be kept simple. (Or at least, it helps if there is a simple on-ramp somewhere...). There are risks to always developing more and moving away from the simple offering that appealed to folk in the first place... Which isn't to say I don't like the new features that appear with each new release of eg Jupyter notebooks and isn't to say that Jupyter project shouldn't become an ever more powerful tool for expert and power scientific computing users.

But it's easy to forget that the experience of welcoming new features as you perceive they're missing, because you're growing in expertise as the tool acquires more powerful features, is different to someone coming to the environment for the first time - as a simple notebook that did what it did 3 years ago, to the more complex notebook it is now, to the yet more complex Jupyterlab view?

--tony

Matthias Bussonnier

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Feb 16, 2017, 2:44:04 PM2/16/17
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Hi Tony,

A few inline responses.

On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 11:22 AM, Tony Hirst <tony....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Looking at the notes - We encourage users to start trying JupyterLab in
> preparation for a future transition - I have a question re: the roadmap:

> - will Jupyter notebooks continue to be available as such once Jupyterlab is
> available?

Yes. At some point it will become an optional component so you will need
to enable it (and potentially disable lab if you don't want it). Both should
coexist for some time.

>(could a jupyterlab instance be configured to just mimic a simple
> notebook UI, for example)

Not yet. But that something I'd like to have as well. It's not a
priority though.

> - will Jupyterhub continue to supplort multiuser deployment of Jupyter
> notebooks?

Yes. JupyterHub does not really care of what is behind it. It already
works with Lab.
Ian is working on adding realtime multiuser collaboration, but that
will be to Lab only.


> One of the attractions of Jupyter notebooks in education and for supporting
> use of code outside computing discipline is that the notebook interface is
> relatively simple and friendly without all the sidebar chrome and menus and
> features and tools and stuff that make IDEs a terrifying experience for most
> people. I'm keen to be able to keep using a simple clean interface from the
> off with students and nontechies.

Lab is plugin based. You will need a non-default Lab. and activate only
what you want. for your students.

> I'm lobbying my institution to make notebooks available locally, a process
> that will take 3-6 months to get deployed and then be expected to not change
> much for a chunk of time. What should I be lobbying for?! I'm pitching for
> novices to be able to access simple notebook UIs without any need for too
> many features in the first instance.

That's tough. Lab will probably not be completely ready this year (maybe ?)
but we'll slow down on developing the classic notebook. Depending on
your exact timescale and needs, I can see both being a good answer.


> (eg if/when nteract ships with a bundled kernel, I can see it being great
> for use with this user community (even more so if the ability to launch
> temporary or multiuser nteract instances from a remote instituional server
> accessed via a browser).)

Kyle might be better person to answer for these timescale.

> By way of trying to express my general concerns, as opposed to just being
> critical of the new... Looking at things like RStudio, it used to be
> relatively simple... but as it gets richer features and more powerful tools,
> and experts who've grown with it just have to keep up with it, and maybe
> also demand more of it as they get more expert/professional, it just gets
> more complicated and scary for novices coming to it for the first time.
> Sometimes less is more. The on-ramp needs to be kept simple. (Or at least,
> it helps if there is a simple on-ramp somewhere...). There are risks to
> always developing more and moving away from the simple offering that
> appealed to folk in the first place... Which isn't to say I don't like the
> new features that appear with each new release of eg Jupyter notebooks and
> isn't to say that Jupyter project shouldn't become an ever more powerful
> tool for expert and power scientific computing users.

Thanks for point of view and expressing your concern. We hope that the
plugin-base
approach can allow a (for example) jupyterlab-minimal to be available, which is
sufficiently user-friendly until user are exprienced enough to move to "full".

>
> But it's easy to forget that the experience of welcoming new features as you
> perceive they're missing, because you're growing in expertise as the tool
> acquires more powerful features, is different to someone coming to the
> environment for the first time - as a simple notebook that did what it did 3
> years ago, to the more complex notebook it is now, to the yet more complex
> Jupyterlab view?

When/if you try Lab, we'll greatly appreciate all your feedback on
what seem unnatural.
It's indeed hard to keep a newcommer eyes. Even best, if it's the
first time you use it,
if you can record your screen, and talk, then share the video
(privately) with us, we can
study it and look at what are the confusing, or non discoverable parts.

Thanks,
--
Matthias

Kyle Kelley

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Feb 16, 2017, 3:04:34 PM2/16/17
to jup...@googlegroups.com, Tim Head, Abhishek Kapatkar
Hey Tony!

I certainly agree that we need to continue to have a simplified interface with notebooks (standalone), in addition to letting others have a more complex experience. I'm glad you expressed this.

Happy to answer the nteract bits a little more.

if/when nteract ships with a bundled kernel, I can see it being great for use with this user community

Tim Head and others have created a simple setup (https://github.com/nteract/snakestagram) that creates conda environments on all our supported platforms and I've tested it out as a kernel (https://github.com/nteract/snakestagram/issues/7). If there's dedicated work to finish that off, we could certainly have it in the beta. Out of the box we could support an embedded kernel for Python, R, and Node.js, though the overall package will be fairly big -- at least it would be self contained though!

even more so if the ability to launch temporary or multiuser nteract instances from a remote instituional server accessed via a browser

A few of us are working on that now, hopefully I'll have a good blog post about it soon. Right now it's simply rendering notebooks in https://github.com/nteract/commuter, the plan is to allow it to be one big multi-user hub that enables sharing first and foremost. In order to get to this, the individual modules and components from nteract notebook are being exported as packages (https://github.com/nteract/nteract/tree/master/packages).

-- Kyle


On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 11:22 AM, Tony Hirst <tony....@gmail.com> wrote:

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Kyle Kelley (@rgbkrklambdaops.com)

Brian Granger

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Feb 16, 2017, 5:34:08 PM2/16/17
to Project Jupyter
Tony,

Great questions and feedback! Inline thoughts below...

> - will Jupyter notebooks continue to be available as such once Jupyterlab is
> available? (could a jupyterlab instance be configured to just mimic a simple
> notebook UI, for example)

Yes, the core JS component in JupyterLab are very well decoupled and
designed to be used and reused in different ways. The JupyterLab team
is very aware of the need to provide a UI that remains as simple as
possible. Allowing individual notebooks to be edited in their own
browser tab is *one* way of providing that. We have other ideas as
well and will continue to explore these things for the 1.0 release and
beyond. I spend much of my time teaching undergrads with the notebook
and I know first hand how important it is to have something simple.

> - will Jupyterhub continue to supplort multiuser deployment of Jupyter
> notebooks?

Yep, already works fine with JupyterHub. I have been using
JupyterLab+Hub for the past 2 months in my data science course. Simply
pip installing jupyterlab (and enabling its serverextension) was all
that was needed.

>
> One of the attractions of Jupyter notebooks in education and for supporting
> use of code outside computing discipline is that the notebook interface is
> relatively simple and friendly without all the sidebar chrome and menus and
> features and tools and stuff that make IDEs a terrifying experience for most
> people. I'm keen to be able to keep using a simple clean interface from the
> off with students and nontechies.

Yes absolutely. Keeping JupyterLab simple while still providing the
extra power has been one of my main design priorities. We are *not*
there yet, but this is super important.

>
> I'm lobbying my institution to make notebooks available locally, a process
> that will take 3-6 months to get deployed and then be expected to not change
> much for a chunk of time. What should I be lobbying for?! I'm pitching for
> novices to be able to access simple notebook UIs without any need for too
> many features in the first instance.

It depends on when you are doing this.

If it was today, I would just stick with the classic jupyter notebook
+ jupyterhub. When JupyterLab comes out *midyear* (I don't know where
Matthias got the idea it might be delayed until 2018 - that isn't the
case), it should be easy to optionally add JupyterLab (literally just
an extra pip install), but to keep classic notebook as well. Both run
fine side by side in the same JupyterHub deployment and a user can
pick which to use if both are installed.

>
> (eg if/when nteract ships with a bundled kernel, I can see it being great
> for use with this user community (even more so if the ability to launch
> temporary or multiuser nteract instances from a remote instituional server
> accessed via a browser).)

Yeah the most difficult thing to install is not the UI - but the kernels.

>
> By way of trying to express my general concerns, as opposed to just being
> critical of the new... Looking at things like RStudio, it used to be
> relatively simple... but as it gets richer features and more powerful tools,
> and experts who've grown with it just have to keep up with it, and maybe
> also demand more of it as they get more expert/professional, it just gets
> more complicated and scary for novices coming to it for the first time.
> Sometimes less is more. The on-ramp needs to be kept simple. (Or at least,
> it helps if there is a simple on-ramp somewhere...). There are risks to
> always developing more and moving away from the simple offering that
> appealed to folk in the first place... Which isn't to say I don't like the
> new features that appear with each new release of eg Jupyter notebooks and
> isn't to say that Jupyter project shouldn't become an ever more powerful
> tool for expert and power scientific computing users.

+100.

>
> But it's easy to forget that the experience of welcoming new features as you
> perceive they're missing, because you're growing in expertise as the tool
> acquires more powerful features, is different to someone coming to the
> environment for the first time - as a simple notebook that did what it did 3
> years ago, to the more complex notebook it is now, to the yet more complex
> Jupyterlab view?

Can you be more specific about the "complexity" here. I am not denying
the notebook has become more complex or that JupyterLab is more
complex than the notebook. But there are many types of complexities
and I am interested about which you are thinking about here. Some that
I can think of that could be an issue (in any software):

* Multiple "acitvities" on a single page
* Complexity of the code base
* Visual complexity
* Feature complexity (too many visual elements, too many borders,
regions, colors, etc.)
* Bad UI/UX design (distracting, overwhelming, etc.)

Would love any specific concrete feedback you have on these things to
help us refine JupyterLab.

Cheers,

Brian

>
> --tony
>
> On Wednesday, 15 February 2017 15:11:30 UTC, takowl wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've just released the first beta for Jupyter Notebook 5.0. Please try it
>> out and let us know about any bugs. You can install it using:
>>
>> pip install --upgrade --pre notebook
>>
>> There isn't a headline big new feature in 5.0, but rather a range of new
>> features and improvements. You can read about some of them here:
>> http://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Thomas
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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>
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



--
Brian E. Granger
Associate Professor of Physics and Data Science
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
@ellisonbg on Twitter and GitHub
bgra...@calpoly.edu and elli...@gmail.com

Tony Hirst

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Feb 17, 2017, 8:47:34 AM2/17/17
to Project Jupyter, elli...@gmail.com
Thanks all for the replies.

[This reply turned into a ramble over a coffee break! Not sure what point I was trying to make in the end... Apols for that...]

Re: trying to log confusion, I'll try to keep notes on things I notice or that crop up in student / novice comments. We're about to do a trawl of comments on a MOOC that used the notebooks so I'll try to tease out any of those that mention notebook usability issues.

I guess one of the immediate complexity issues relates to things like keyboard shortcuts. Eg when a single notebook cell could only be moved up and down using a toolbar up/down button, you were quite limited in commands available for rearranging cells. As the ability to select and move multiple cells was introduced, more really useful functionality became available, but at a cost to novice users: there are lots of different ways in which you can move cells around rather than just one. The possibilities become bewildering.

More generally, give a novice an instrument with too many dials and buttons on it and it can be hard to get them to see which are the useful primitive operations and which are the nice to haves that allow you to work more powerfully, or do some fine tuning. (I'm all for getting novices to play with power tools, but think there's often a danger of overwhelming them by making too many features available too early.)

In an apprentice model, you earn the right to access more skills/knowledge/tools (eg in something like Stack Overflow, features are unlocked as you gain points). Same with growing with a tool that is being actively developed - you start to desire additional features to help you work round problems you've identified with the current one, and as each new feature is developed and introduced it is essentially 'unlocked' and added as a more specialist tool the tools you already use. I wonder what an interface would look like that reveals features to you the more you use it? (Not just ungreying things previously locked; absenting them from completely from the UI in the early phases of use). So everyone starts with their own "version 1" when they come in and the functionality of version 2, version 3, version 4 etc is revealed as they become more expert... (The tutorial helps here, but I can imagine the tutorial getting richer. I'm also really wary of this being seen as some sort of reimagining of clippy (young 'uns won't get that reference!), that pop up unannounced every so often to show you a particular feature!) Introducing new features into a familiar interface also brings with it surprise, and as you realise you can now do something you couldn't before you essentially give yourself a little lesson in how the new feature works and make a mental note you can now do this thing that you couldn't before.

I can see the JupyterLab approach working in education at a more macro scale. Eg as you progress through several courses, you might be given a JupyterLab config with more things enabled by default at the start of each more advanced course. (Developers do this with their own tools all the time by installing addons and plugins; but they build the complexity / power of the environment as they grow more skilled in using it.).

--tony
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