Hi there folks! We just introduced a small but pretty significant change to part of Observable: [image] Instead of a › next to cells, there’s now a ⠇ with options for what to do: you can edit, close, and permalink named cells through this UI. [image] You can still click on the cell’s name to …

Just tested it with mobile browser, I had really much better experience this time than before

I’m a bit ambivalent regarding the ui change. I liked the triangle that simply opened a cell, ready to edit. Now I need two clicks to do that. I find that harder, more obtrusive. I found the old delete cell harder, requiring two clicks. How about having a trash can next to the pushpin next to the t…

A single click still suffices if you click anywhere else (away from the new “⋮” menu) in the space to the left of a cell.

Hi there Tom & Team. Thanks for all your hard work to make Observable such a great site! I continue to learn a lot. Regarding these more recent changes – is it just me, or did we lose the ‘move up / down’ feature for organizing notebooks?

I also found that the the triangle was a bit more intuitive for editing - and only a click away.

The up & down buttons are gone, because we’ve got a better way to visually rearrange cells now: you can now drag cells .

Fortunately, the keyboard shortcuts for moving cells up and down still work!

I think you’re approaching this from a Desktop UI mindset, right? Because “sufficient space” is a notoriously difficult problem on mobile :wink: EDIT: Also, on Desktop just clicking left of three dots expands/collapses the cell as always

Thanks for all replies! I totally missed that you can simply click in the huge margin area to open en close a cell. Wonderful. I withdraw my remarks. Great improvement. Thanks Observable Team.

I like these changes, but a minor note: I no longer seem to be able reorder cells on mobile (iPad/Safari). Before I could click the arrow buttons, but the new drag mechanism does not appear to be activated on touch events. Unless I’m missing something?

A new edit button & better mobile UI

Announcements

Topic		Replies	Views
Feature request: drag to re-arrange Feedback	17	4142	December 5, 2018
New Notebook Cell Toggle UI (Feedback Wanted!) Feedback	27	4897	March 25, 2020
Cell shortcuts! Announcements	16	2550	April 11, 2021
Mobile user experience Feedback	4	58	September 17, 2026
Officially announcing the new Observable Announcements	46	598	September 24, 2026

A new edit button & better mobile UI

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