7 ms·

Google soft launches collaborative Jupyter-like notebook

85 points by kodisha 9y ago

aeroaks 9y ago
Wants me to use Chrome to open the site.
- austinjp 9y ago
  Wants me to sign into Google, on mobile.
  - mlcdf 9y ago
    Same on desktop.
- slgeorge 9y ago
  Someone in Google really has jumped the shark at this point. How we (geeks) knashed our teeth in the 90's when sites were IE only - it's been over a decade since I've seen this - and now GOOGLE is pushing their browser to the exclusion of others. Seriously do I have to start playing with my browser string again!
  - jastanton 9y ago
    > it's been over a decade since I've seen this Apple does this every year in order to stream WWDC. It’s the one time a year I open up safari :)
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Edge can also understand the video format. It is a different situation, because FF and Chrome would also able to show the stream if their developers used the macOS and Windows media APIs.
  - jchw 9y ago
    It's not checking your user agent - the banner is a warning, it's not blocking anything. And for good reason, WebComponents support is not stable in Firefox or Edge yet. The page won't work properly, but you can at least view it if you enable WebComponents support in about:config.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- naringas 9y ago
  doesn't work on firefox... things like these are why I (half-jokingly) think that google is the new "old microsoft", hahha then again, I'm probably gonna stop using firefox soon after some key extensions (which can't be ported to the new API) stop working
  - seba_dos1 9y ago
    Try it anyway. From all the browsers that don't have your key extensions, Firefox 57+ might still be the best option. It's still greatly customizable via userContent.css file, and there's a lot of motion to improve the abilities of WebExtensions. Thanks to that I've brought back vertical tabs on Firefox 57 that now look and work even better than before - something I wouldn't be able to do on Chromium at all.
gpapilion 9y ago
This looks promising, and I remember them announcing this sometime ago. I was curious as to how they would handle CSVs or other datasources, and the only example I see is bigtable. I thought I'd be able to type open and hit tab a few times but no luck. It wouldn't let me run any code until I "connected a runtime", but I had to wait for that to become available. That took me to a wait list page. I guess it will be a few more months before there is something meaningful to try.
ppurka 9y ago
Collaboration over jupyter notebooks has been available in CoCalc [ https://cocalc.com/ https://cocalc.com/ ], formerly the SageMathCloud online notebook, for several years now. I wonder what prompted Google to introduce this.
- funkjunky 9y ago
  Googler here, no relation to the colab team. What probably prompted us to introduce this is that it was an internal project that many of us really really like and use quite often, and we thought it would be nice if you guys could use it too. That's it. It was probably somebody's 20% project at first, I don't think there was any great ambition for an actual product when they started it. Googlers tend to reinvent the wheel a lot because somebody here likes some tool or library or application, wants to use it, but wants to avoid licensing restrictions, incompatibilities with our internal tools, wants total control over its development so they can change and add things as they see fit, etc. Then it grows up and gets a team with a PM and everything, and if it does really well we might share it and let it out of its cage into the wild. You can take it or leave it. Also did I mention that I really really like colab? I've been evangelizing it to my team at Google Cloud support for all kinds of things like playbooks, reproductions, easily modifiable tools and scripts, etc. It's like Google docs for jupyter notebooks, it's pretty great.
  - namtrac 9y ago
    Any timeline for Python3 support?
gorbachev 9y ago
What an earth is on that web app that it can't work on an up-to-date Firefox?
- ogrisel 9y ago
  It's basically a demo of their native code sandbox technology: (P)NaCL https://developer.chrome.com/native-client https://developer.chrome.com/native-client This new online notebook system is probably the successor of: http://colaboratory.jupyter.org/welcome/ http://colaboratory.jupyter.org/welcome/
  - ogrisel 9y ago
    I was confused. This is a hosted colaboraty service. But the new google drive / jupyter integration is called jupyter-drive: https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter-drive https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter-drive
  - jchw 9y ago
    Is this really a demo of PNaCl? While I can find references to a previous project also called Colaboratory, which appears to have a Chrome app and probably indeed used NaCl/PNaCl, this actually appears to connect to a backend of some sort, as evidenced by the "Registration required" whenever you try to run any code in Google Chrome.
- cabalamat 9y ago
  Embrace, extend and extinguish. Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.
- jchw 9y ago
  WebComponents is the reason the page won't display anything in Firefox. If you enable them in about:config, you will at least be able to view the sheet.
pjmlp 9y ago
> This site may not work in your browser. Please use Chrome for Desktop. Thanks, but no.
- jchw 9y ago
  You don't actually need Chrome for Desktop, just a browser with WebComponents support. In fact, it will partially work in Firefox if you go into about:config and enable `dom.webcomponents.enabled` and `dom.webcomponents.customelements.enabled` - the banner is just a warning.
  - jchw 9y ago
    Not quite sure why I'm getting downvoted on this one, I said 'partially working' and it really does. Here it is in Firefox Developer Edition with those two config items changed and nothing else: https://i.imgur.com/MFXE6uA.png https://i.imgur.com/MFXE6uA.png Of course, the CSS is broken, but Firefox isn't really done with WebComponents support, so that's probably not surprising.
    - darklajid 9y ago
      I didn't downvote you, but upvoted the "thanks no" and flagged the post. 1) A website that doesn't work in browsers (without configuration) is crap 2) Google again shoving that unwanted browser in my face (on top of afs all over the place and the "Upgrade to Chrome" bullshit) is getting out of hand You might present a workaround to read the website. Downvoters might feel like me and don't give a damn about this content if it doesn't display in a normal, modern browser..
      - jchw 9y ago
        Well, that is fair enough, but I wasn't claiming to support Google's position so much as I was pointing out that this is not a case of UA blocking. It seems a lot more innocuous than that. Rather than tell Google engineers they can't use cutting edge features that they may have even worked on getting standardized, I'd rather go the route of doing what I can to support Mozilla in implementing these features faster. Right now I'm not sure what that is aside monetary donations and code contributions, but either way it seems like a more sustainable future. If Google were using non-standard features or blocking the entire page based on UA, I'd agree this would be very annoying. But it certainly isn't, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, Hangouts deserves all of this scorn. It doesn't work in Firefox in any capacity to this day. Very disappointed about that. That being said, it's the only Google service I use right now that doesn't, among Maps, Docs, Search, Drive, Inbox...
megamindbrian 9y ago
Woohoo, a new place to put code I'm all in!
abhinavkgp 9y ago
Does it support version control? Since that is one of the main challenges while using Jupyter notebooks.
- sunsetMurk 9y ago
  appears so - was just playing with it and similar to google docs/sheets there is 'Revision History'. It allows you to 'restore' to a previous save, or download that version.

85 points by kodisha 9y ago

aeroaks 9y ago

Wants me to use Chrome to open the site.

austinjp 9y ago
Wants me to sign into Google, on mobile.
- mlcdf 9y ago
  Same on desktop.
slgeorge 9y ago
Someone in Google really has jumped the shark at this point. How we (geeks) knashed our teeth in the 90's when sites were IE only - it's been over a decade since I've seen this - and now GOOGLE is pushing their browser to the exclusion of others. Seriously do I have to start playing with my browser string again!
- jastanton 9y ago
  > it's been over a decade since I've seen this Apple does this every year in order to stream WWDC. It’s the one time a year I open up safari :)
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Edge can also understand the video format. It is a different situation, because FF and Chrome would also able to show the stream if their developers used the macOS and Windows media APIs.
- jchw 9y ago
  It's not checking your user agent - the banner is a warning, it's not blocking anything. And for good reason, WebComponents support is not stable in Firefox or Edge yet. The page won't work properly, but you can at least view it if you enable WebComponents support in about:config.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
naringas 9y ago
doesn't work on firefox... things like these are why I (half-jokingly) think that google is the new "old microsoft", hahha then again, I'm probably gonna stop using firefox soon after some key extensions (which can't be ported to the new API) stop working
- seba_dos1 9y ago
  Try it anyway. From all the browsers that don't have your key extensions, Firefox 57+ might still be the best option. It's still greatly customizable via userContent.css file, and there's a lot of motion to improve the abilities of WebExtensions. Thanks to that I've brought back vertical tabs on Firefox 57 that now look and work even better than before - something I wouldn't be able to do on Chromium at all.

gpapilion 9y ago

This looks promising, and I remember them announcing this sometime ago. I was curious as to how they would handle CSVs or other datasources, and the only example I see is bigtable. I thought I'd be able to type open and hit tab a few times but no luck. It wouldn't let me run any code until I "connected a runtime", but I had to wait for that to become available. That took me to a wait list page. I guess it will be a few more months before there is something meaningful to try.

ppurka 9y ago

Collaboration over jupyter notebooks has been available in CoCalc [ https://cocalc.com/ https://cocalc.com/ ], formerly the SageMathCloud online notebook, for several years now. I wonder what prompted Google to introduce this.

funkjunky 9y ago
Googler here, no relation to the colab team. What probably prompted us to introduce this is that it was an internal project that many of us really really like and use quite often, and we thought it would be nice if you guys could use it too. That's it. It was probably somebody's 20% project at first, I don't think there was any great ambition for an actual product when they started it. Googlers tend to reinvent the wheel a lot because somebody here likes some tool or library or application, wants to use it, but wants to avoid licensing restrictions, incompatibilities with our internal tools, wants total control over its development so they can change and add things as they see fit, etc. Then it grows up and gets a team with a PM and everything, and if it does really well we might share it and let it out of its cage into the wild. You can take it or leave it. Also did I mention that I really really like colab? I've been evangelizing it to my team at Google Cloud support for all kinds of things like playbooks, reproductions, easily modifiable tools and scripts, etc. It's like Google docs for jupyter notebooks, it's pretty great.
- namtrac 9y ago
  Any timeline for Python3 support?

gorbachev 9y ago

What an earth is on that web app that it can't work on an up-to-date Firefox?

ogrisel 9y ago
It's basically a demo of their native code sandbox technology: (P)NaCL https://developer.chrome.com/native-client https://developer.chrome.com/native-client This new online notebook system is probably the successor of: http://colaboratory.jupyter.org/welcome/ http://colaboratory.jupyter.org/welcome/
- ogrisel 9y ago
  I was confused. This is a hosted colaboraty service. But the new google drive / jupyter integration is called jupyter-drive: https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter-drive https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter-drive
- jchw 9y ago
  Is this really a demo of PNaCl? While I can find references to a previous project also called Colaboratory, which appears to have a Chrome app and probably indeed used NaCl/PNaCl, this actually appears to connect to a backend of some sort, as evidenced by the "Registration required" whenever you try to run any code in Google Chrome.
cabalamat 9y ago
Embrace, extend and extinguish. Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.
jchw 9y ago
WebComponents is the reason the page won't display anything in Firefox. If you enable them in about:config, you will at least be able to view the sheet.

pjmlp 9y ago

> This site may not work in your browser. Please use Chrome for Desktop. Thanks, but no.

jchw 9y ago
You don't actually need Chrome for Desktop, just a browser with WebComponents support. In fact, it will partially work in Firefox if you go into about:config and enable `dom.webcomponents.enabled` and `dom.webcomponents.customelements.enabled` - the banner is just a warning.
- jchw 9y ago
  Not quite sure why I'm getting downvoted on this one, I said 'partially working' and it really does. Here it is in Firefox Developer Edition with those two config items changed and nothing else: https://i.imgur.com/MFXE6uA.png https://i.imgur.com/MFXE6uA.png Of course, the CSS is broken, but Firefox isn't really done with WebComponents support, so that's probably not surprising.
  - darklajid 9y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but upvoted the "thanks no" and flagged the post. 1) A website that doesn't work in browsers (without configuration) is crap 2) Google again shoving that unwanted browser in my face (on top of afs all over the place and the "Upgrade to Chrome" bullshit) is getting out of hand You might present a workaround to read the website. Downvoters might feel like me and don't give a damn about this content if it doesn't display in a normal, modern browser..
    - jchw 9y ago
      Well, that is fair enough, but I wasn't claiming to support Google's position so much as I was pointing out that this is not a case of UA blocking. It seems a lot more innocuous than that. Rather than tell Google engineers they can't use cutting edge features that they may have even worked on getting standardized, I'd rather go the route of doing what I can to support Mozilla in implementing these features faster. Right now I'm not sure what that is aside monetary donations and code contributions, but either way it seems like a more sustainable future. If Google were using non-standard features or blocking the entire page based on UA, I'd agree this would be very annoying. But it certainly isn't, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, Hangouts deserves all of this scorn. It doesn't work in Firefox in any capacity to this day. Very disappointed about that. That being said, it's the only Google service I use right now that doesn't, among Maps, Docs, Search, Drive, Inbox...

megamindbrian 9y ago

Woohoo, a new place to put code I'm all in!

abhinavkgp 9y ago

Does it support version control? Since that is one of the main challenges while using Jupyter notebooks.

sunsetMurk 9y ago
appears so - was just playing with it and similar to google docs/sheets there is 'Revision History'. It allows you to 'restore' to a previous save, or download that version.