Add Ipywidgets support

[joseFranciscoDiez]

Widgets are the most widespread way to provide interactivity with the user in Jupyter notebooks.

Google Colab should support ipywidgets or provide an alternative.

Ref https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47269168/ipywidgets-with-google-colaboratory

[blois]

Also see #6

[KelSolaar]

Hi,

As many I'm super interested by that feature support and wanted to know if there was any news about it?

Cheers,

Thomas

[blois]

Are there specific widgets or scenarios that you are interested in?

[KelSolaar]

@blois : Yes absolutely :)

Here is a typical example I would be keen on running in Google Colab:

Widgets used: Box, Dropdown, HBox, IntSlider, Label, Textarea, VBox

You can play live with it in Binder if you can bear with the slow startup time (just need to execute the cells): https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/colour-science/colour-playground/master?filepath=playground%2Fcolour.ipynb

[chengs]

@blois, also, some tqdm (a progress bar) users need to run the tqdm on CoLab, which needs ipywidgets to work.
REF tqdm/tqdm#558

[rocha]

@blois support for ipyvolume or any other interactive 3d plot widget would be great!

[mdmadhu]

@blois, ipyleaflet is another widget that would be very useful to see in Colab. Colab notebooks would be a great way forward for Python users of Google Earth Engine to collaborate, and here, ipyleaflet in Jupyter notebooks is currently among the recommended/favoured options for visualising tiled maps created from analyses. There are workarounds, but support for ipywidgets would be great. Thanks.

[KelSolaar]

Adding pythreejs to the bunch!

[maartenbreddels]

As a core jupyter-widgets / ipywidget dev I want to let you know we are interested in support on colab. Feel free to reach out to us for help or discussion in care you need help:

• https://github.com/jupyter-widgets/ipywidgets/
• https://gitter.im/jupyter-widgets/Lobby

cc @jasongrout @SylvainCorlay @vidartf @mwcraig

[Yomguithereal]

Adding ipysigma to the bunch.

[tovrstra]

Some more:

• https://github.com/arose/nglview
• https://github.com/Autodesk/notebook-molecular-visualization

[mwcraig]

I'd also like to see ipyevents in the mix...I am a little biased, though, since I wrote it. But including ipyevents would also allow astrowidgets.

[thewtex]

Adding itk-jupyter-widgets, interactive Jupyter widgets to visualize images in 2D and 3D, as another example in the vibrant ipywidgets ecosystem that would be helpful for colab adoption.

[perez1987]

+1

[maallen3]

I need this too!

[DuaneNielsen]

I'd just like tqdm progress bars to work nicely, that would be good...

[d13g0]

Me too!

[diego898]

Another vote for supporting tqdm!

[chengs]

@diego888
See this tqdm/tqdm#640

If need to use tqdm on colab immediately.

Or you can wait until it is merged into master.

[smilinrobin]

+1
Need this :)

[wesuga]

+1

[chrisbol]

+1, would be great if Slider, Checkbox, Combo, Select widgets will become available

[blois]

Opened #1302

[barissayil]

I'd like to be able to use tqdm on colab as well.

[blois]

@barissayil tqdm notebook should work in Colab: https://colab.research.google.com/gist/blois/0edb04e592c16cbab8f0f9b1cff3595e/tqdm_notebook.ipynb

[adriangb]

It would be amazing to get support for third party widgets!

[omar-3]

is there any hope for ipyleaflet to be included?

[jph00]

@blois it appears this has been implemented now - should this issue be closed?

[blois]

@jph00 yes, most of the issues now fall under #498.

[Erhannis]

I'm having trouble with the Play widget. The buttons don't show their icons, and button presses do not trigger any notable reaction.
Test case: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1WE2pV0UfgRb0cfOVdCkgo7MzwCkLBdDV#scrollTo=Y8eS_TugFa6i
Note that the same code on a local Jupyter instance works properly; the four buttons have icons, and pressing the play button causes the slider to advance and the output to output, every 2 seconds.

[AJAX6255]

Erhannis: Yes, I ran your code in colab and had the same (poor) results. I then ran the same code cell in Kaggle and it worked! Same version of ipywidgets 7.5.1. Perhaps a dependency issue? 🤔

…

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 9:33 PM Erhannis ***@***.***> wrote: I'm having trouble with the Play widget. The buttons don't show their icons, and button presses do not trigger any notable reaction. Test case: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1WE2pV0UfgRb0cfOVdCkgo7MzwCkLBdDV#scrollTo=Y8eS_TugFa6i Note that the same code on a local Jupyter instance works properly; the four buttons have icons, and pressing the play button causes the slider to advance and the output to output, every 2 seconds. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#60 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AI6H6K2REJA2EDW46D4XG4TSIFPP3ANCNFSM4EQWT7YQ> .

[Erhannis]

Maybe so; not sure how I'd know, really.

[AJAX6255]

If you type the following command in both environments (working and not working), you will get a list of the installed software and its version number. !pip list Then you compare (yes it is tedious) the differences in the software release numbers. Lastly if there is a software package in the working environment that is NOT present in the non-working environment, then that MAY likely be the issue. I will try this too but I encourage you to try it. Then I may save it and run a "diff" to try and make it easier. (more automatic). It may turn out to be an older version of ipython being run in colab?

…

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 8:04 AM Erhannis ***@***.***> wrote: Maybe so; not sure how I'd know, really. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#60 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AI6H6KZLB3APSR7N3GYSEWDSIHZPBANCNFSM4EQWT7YQ> .

[AJAX6255]

Here is an interesting reference that may help. https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/widgets.ipynb On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 9:25 AM Allan Jackson <allan.jackson6255@gmail.com> wrote:

…

If you type the following command in both environments (working and not working), you will get a list of the installed software and its version number. !pip list Then you compare (yes it is tedious) the differences in the software release numbers. Lastly if there is a software package in the working environment that is NOT present in the non-working environment, then that MAY likely be the issue. I will try this too but I encourage you to try it. Then I may save it and run a "diff" to try and make it easier. (more automatic). It may turn out to be an older version of ipython being run in colab? On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 8:04 AM Erhannis ***@***.***> wrote: > Maybe so; not sure how I'd know, really. > > — > You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. > Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub > <#60 (comment)>, > or unsubscribe > <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AI6H6KZLB3APSR7N3GYSEWDSIHZPBANCNFSM4EQWT7YQ> > . >

[blois]

@Erhannis this sounds like #1302

[Erhannis]

@blois That does appear to account for the icon problem, at least; thanks. Unfortunately, while the workaround fixes the icons, the widget remains non-functional.

@AJAX6255 Well, I've gotten a !pip list from colab and from a jupyter labs workspace, now:
colab_pip.txt
jupyter_pip.txt

As per your note, I see that the ipython version for colab is 5.5.0, vs. jupyter labs' 7.16.1.
I also note ipykernel v 4.10.1 vs 5.1.4, though I don't really know what is and isn't relevant.
The jupyter-client versions are different, and there are a few differences in exactly which jupyter-related packages are installed.
The versions of ipywidgets appear to be the same.

[AJAX6255]

@Erhannis I updated my colab ipython to 7.16.1 (not recommended by colab) from 5.5.0 and it did not resolve the issue. Hmm..

…

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 10:23 AM Erhannis ***@***.***> wrote: @blois <https://github.com/blois> That does appear to account for the icon problem, at least; thanks. Unfortunately, while the workaround fixes the icons, the widget remains non-functional. @AJAX6255 <https://github.com/AJAX6255> Well, I've gotten a !pip list from colab and from a jupyter labs workspace, now: colab_pip.txt <https://github.com/googlecolab/colabtools/files/5300771/colab_pip.txt> jupyter_pip.txt <https://github.com/googlecolab/colabtools/files/5300772/jupyter_pip.txt> As per your note, I see that the ipython version for colab is 5.5.0, vs. jupyter labs' 7.16.1. I also note ipykernel v 4.10.1 vs 5.1.4, though I don't really know what is and isn't relevant. The jupyter-client versions are different, and there are a few differences in exactly which jupyter-related packages are installed. The versions of ipywidgets appear to be the same. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#60 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AI6H6K7QBFPV7UISED7UQ2DSIIJZPANCNFSM4EQWT7YQ> .

[blois]

@Erhannis this looks like it may be an issue with jslink- I just opened https://github.com/googlecolab/colabtools/is.

[Erhannis]

Oh! @blois , you were right! jslink doesn't work - but the play widget does, actually! This means that while you can't bind two values together like in the docs, you can do the following:

def value_changed(change):
  print(change.new)
play.observe(value_changed,'value')

It's probably tricky to keep two objects in sync like this, without getting e.g. infinite recursion, but for what I wanted to do I only needed a unidirectional link, anyway. Thanks!

[maartenbreddels]

A good workaround might be link or dlink instead, that goes via the kernel, similar to observe.

[Erhannis]

@maartenbreddels Oh, you mean when observe fires it triggers/requires communication with the server? That might explain why using a different computer in my house causes my hacky "animation" to run much slower than when it's localhost, haha

[maartenbreddels]

Yes, since it executes Python code, which lives at the server. That's why jslink (which is handled in the browser) usually gives smoother results (but it cannot execute code).