Notebook v7 menus should match the v6 ones whenever possible

[fperez]

Problem

To ease the transition of Classic users who may want to switch to RetroLab, having all menus match as much as possible, would be very valuable. Obviously there may be some new features in Retro that don't exist in Classic, and those will simply be seen as an upgrade, but:

• Key functionality that existed in a given menu should be in the same menu in Retro.
• Similar functionality should be named the same in Retro as much as possible, unless it's matching an updated naming choice from JupyterLab and it's not likely to confuse anyone.
• The layout of the menus, dividers, etc, should match as much as possible that of Classic, so that existing documentation and learning materials made for Classic applies to Retro as well.

I didn't do a full audit of the menus, but I did find that the File menu is, for example, entirely missing the download option:

That's available from the file manager, but the UX of having to go there from an open notebook to download it is pretty sub-optimal, and may not be obvious to many new users.

BTW, this is relevant to berkeley-dsep-infra/datahub#2422, as we consider issues blocking the usage of Retro for Classic-based courses.

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[jtpio]

Thanks @fperez for reporting 👍

JupyterLab 3.1 added a way to customize menu items more easily via the settings. So maybe there is a way to leverage that here to have full control on the order.

The missing Download entry should be fixed in jupyterlab/retrolab#263

[jtpio]

JupyterLab 3.1 added a way to customize menu items more easily via the settings. So maybe there is a way to leverage that here to have full control on the order.

The relevant documentation is here: https://jupyterlab.readthedocs.io/en/stable/extension/extension_points.html?#settings-defined-menu

An alternative would be to have a custom plugin in retro that would create a menu from scratch or disable most of the entries from JupyterLab.

[jtpio]

For reference we also did a quick comparison of the Jupyter Widgets menus in today's widgets meeting: jupyter-widgets/team-compass#1 (comment)

[fperez]

Awesome, thanks for continuing to dig into this topic. I'll keep going at it too and will open issues as I see them.

[andrii-i]

As I mentioned in another thread, we have 2 release blocking issues left and I wanted to align on what has to be done to release Notebook 7. Ease of transition and need to not invalidate Notebook v6 (educational) content are big parts of JEP 79. Would you say we have achieved sufficient consistency for the release and can address remaining points post-release?

[andrii-i]

• Moving to 7.0.x for further follow up after Notebook 7 release. Related comment: 7.0 Release Plan #6307 (comment)

[fperez]

Thanks for checking, @andrii-i! I have to admit I've been busy with other things and haven't looked in a while - I've also fully transitioned to JLab even for all my undergraduate teaching since I last wrote here, so now I'm much less of a reasonable judge :)

I trust the team has done a huge amount of work on this, so we're probably at the point where it's best to make a release, announce it, and plan on responding to the (inevitable) small issues that people always find once a package goes into much wider usage. But I see the list of known blockers is now down to zero, and I'm not sure waiting much more is beneficial.

There's another reason to release soon, I think: it's early summer, and it's a good time for educators who are some of the big Notebook constituents, to test the materials they may use in the fall semester, still having time for the cycle of feedback and potential changes that may arise from that.

In summary, my 10,000 ft perspective is that we're probably better off moving forward with a release at this point, planning on perhaps a few point updates, so that by August (start of the fall teaching season in many countries), there's a 7.0.x (for a hopefully small value of x) that meets just about everybody's needs.

[andrii-i]

Thank you for the feedback @fperez!