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I really like Observable a lot, and have made a couple of brief, messy visualisations with it (messy in terms of code at least). I hope at some point they can

by mrkwse 6y ago

I really like Observable a lot, and have made a couple of brief, messy visualisations with it (messy in terms of code at least). I hope at some point they can offer some sort of offline support. The focus on ease of sharing is great, and the volume and breadth of content has really helped me to get more proficient with d3. The inability to open and edit notebooks offline/locally is a real inconvenience, however. I have a small personal site on Netlify (with Next.js) and going forward I'm looking at hosting the sort of stuff I have on Observable there, simply as it's easier to work to when offline. The quality of the community and resources is a really valuable thing, but the need to be online is a real drawback at times.

ontouchstart 6y ago
You can host production notebooks offline/locally or on your own SSG/CDN. Here is a project that we built last year (by its nature, it had a limited shelf life so it made no sense to have long term cloud support.) https://spike150.mocanyc.org/ https://spike150.mocanyc.org/ If you inspect the source in the browser, you will see that the notebooks are hosted on the same server. P.S. If you want online interactive notebook on your own site, I guess that is their business model either as a viral sharing of free notebooks or paid private team sharing. (I was on a team plan during the development of the project. But once the project is done, there is no need for us to continue on team plan and be interactive. I am glad that they offer support of offline production notebook.) P.P.S. If Observable Team is listening, here is a business idea for them: observable playground as a service. It would be less a technical challenge than a business development challenge.
kowlo 6y ago
Indeed having the environment offline would be great. But this doesn't seem to fit their model for profit.

by mrkwse 6y ago

ontouchstart 6y ago

You can host production notebooks offline/locally or on your own SSG/CDN. Here is a project that we built last year (by its nature, it had a limited shelf life so it made no sense to have long term cloud support.) https://spike150.mocanyc.org/ https://spike150.mocanyc.org/ If you inspect the source in the browser, you will see that the notebooks are hosted on the same server. P.S. If you want online interactive notebook on your own site, I guess that is their business model either as a viral sharing of free notebooks or paid private team sharing. (I was on a team plan during the development of the project. But once the project is done, there is no need for us to continue on team plan and be interactive. I am glad that they offer support of offline production notebook.) P.P.S. If Observable Team is listening, here is a business idea for them: observable playground as a service. It would be less a technical challenge than a business development challenge.

kowlo 6y ago

Indeed having the environment offline would be great. But this doesn't seem to fit their model for profit.