@ekaszubski We have a solution coming within the next few days to improve this. You will be able to continue editing your public notebooks and republish the changes when you are ready. We hope that this mode (we call it a paused mode for public notebooks) will work well for folks who want to work with a republish workflow. Please stay tuned!
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Great news
Again, I cant help but wonder why this wasn’t playtested and advertised before the policy change. We’ve had the Next opt-in experience, why not this time?
Does “paused” imply that the notebook is not working while editing it? If not, how would this be different than the current system?
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No - the notebook is still live and anyone can view the latest version; they just don’t view the latest version by default.
Check out the following simple embed, for example:
Not very exciting; it just says “Hi”. Now, go to the notebook. Still not very exciting; it just looks like so:
Notice the “Paused” button, though. Clicking there allows you to navigate between the Paused version (that just says “Hi”) and the lastest version (that says "Hi There!!):
So both are visible by all but you’ve got control over what’s more prominent. In addition, it is the Paused version that appears in embeds.
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That is a much better experience, that works for me. Still makes me wonder about the change overall. As it seems one can create a new notebook and immediately pause it, and then only work on the latest version. It’s not quite private, as people can still browse to see latest changes in the works.
For building a new notebook, before it’s ready, will that workflow need to be used? Like when I create a new notebook, it can be days before it’s “ready” to be seen in any context. So would I need to pause the notebook after creation with some cryptic content like “notebook under construction” or is there something more elegant for building notebook before first publish?
This flirts with the idea of private notebooks. Are the latest versions of notebooks indexed by search engines or only the paused version? Can they be filtered from showing-up within observable?
What is the difference between a private notebook and an unlisted draft notebook? As that seems to be main difference here. Private notebook is protected with an auth check, but an unlisted notebook is protected by an unguessable url, unless observable is going to leak it to search engines or other discovery pages internally.
Why didn’t we just keep the publish workflow, and simply make the latest drafts visible for non-paying customers in the same way this is setup? I guess this just rebrands the concept?
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Yes, I agree; I like it better, too.
Right - I think the intention is for all notebooks in free accounts to be findable, though I’m not sure exactly what the underlying mechanism will be.
Folks, there will be documentation describing it when we launch the feature. Just a little bit more patience, please.
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… and here it is!
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The limit on Cloud Files seems to be a limitation of current implementation
Cloud files | Observable documentation
You can create a public notebook with the information from a cloud file if you first snapshot the cloud file to a regular file attachment.
Why can’t Observable allow public notebooks to connect to cloud files; however, Observable create and manage that snapshot?
I regret this new policy. I run a (very modest) data-viz business. I used Observable to prototype visualizations and do data-manipulation. Most of my clients’ data is not open. So being unable to keep my notebooks private is a no-go for me. Given my income I can’t afford yet another monthly subscription (the very concept of having to pay forever is a source of anger to me). The fact that my notebooks are now read-only makes me furious. I’ll be out of Observable soon. I do understand that you have costs to cover, but it should have been clear from the start. This policy seems very much at odds with what seemed to be the mindset behind d3.js and blocks for years.
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Check out Quarto! It has a local first approach and includes a working Observable runtime.
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Wha!! Private notebooks are back. Never mind good work!
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That’s a great achievement Announcing Observable 2.0! - #4 by mbostock !
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Lol @mbrownshoes we saw your post and decided to reverse course the next day!! Jk jk, it’s been in the works for a bit.
For those who missed it, the original version of Mat’s post eloquently lamented the depressing effects of not being able to work in private for free, as many others have in this thread over the last 16 months. I too use Observable to do personal finance stuff, or manage my wedding guest list, or plan a date night, or help friends coordinate Secret Santa, or study ticket sales of their frisbee team, or map out family tree relationships — all things that certainly aren’t business use cases, but which may demand privacy. So I’m relieved people can do that sort of thing for free again.
To be more specific about the change: our new free tier is called “Starter”, and you can see the full feature comparison on https://observablehq.com/pricing. It includes most of what we used to call a “Pro” individual account, now for free. Private notebooks are totally free, and that also includes features that are only possible in private notebooks, like databases and secrets. You can also now have up to 5 people in your Starter workspace, so it’s now free for small teams to work together in private.
But we still gotta make money somehow, lol, right?? So the new focus for the paid offering is: teams of more than 5, cloud compute through scheduled notebooks, and — the big new thing — deploying unlimited Observable Framework projects to the cloud. Starter workspaces can deploy one Framework project for free, so you can try it out and see if you like it, but to deploy more than one you need a Pro team. So there’s now more in Pro, and it has a steeper starting price: $300/mo. for 10 users. Too steep for any individual hobbyist like me, and so really more of a business thing; we don’t expect one person who just wants to make their public or private visualizations in peace to pay us. But if you need a nice premium BI experience for your enterprise or consultancy or whatever… call us!
Since the business model is now more focused on monetizing larger teams, this does mean we’re taking away some stuff that used to be free. You used to be able to have a free team of unlimited size that could only make public notebooks; now there’s no option like that (though existing ones still have access, and we still offer free teams for educators — contact support@observablehq.com). You used to be able to share any number of individual notebooks with up to 5 others, and it could be any number of different people in different notebooks; now those all count toward your Starter workspace cap of 5 people (though, again, all existing sharing is grandfathered in). I paired with like thirty people on random different personal notebooks over the years, and they all still have access, but I can’t add more because I’m way over the cap of 5. I loved doing that stuff… I’ll have to find a way to keep going… hm!
Anyway, overall, we hope that monetizing (1) scale of teams and (2) cloud services (access control, security, deploy, and compute) is a better business model for both our business and our community than monetizing private notebooks. And thank you for everyone’s feedback in this thread, even when it was hard to say and hard to hear.
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free Viewers are taken away is not good 
for a small 2 Editors 20 people company is now facing 10x times of Pro cost?