Notebooks discovery enhancements to consider

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  1. hashtags support to tag notebooks with specific topics

Current global search feature is nice but it scans all the notes and pulls up unrelated notebooks at times.

Allowing notebook authors to tag their notebooks could narrow those search results as your public library grows.

  1. Follow author option

This could extend current notebook likes functionality to get email notifications on new published notebooks by the contributors you fancy, or just in browser notifications of their latest updates with updates count in badges.

  1. Viewing who liked your posts.

with optional email notification when other readers like your contribs.

  1. Trending notebook topics, based on clicks or notebook views.

Could be added below the top site nav as a ribbon to show most popular notebooks flavor flave of the month.

  1. Pinned notebooks

Not just riffing on github features, but I think it would be nice to show what others created and pinned as their top works.

  1. Slug revision history diff display

to see what was updated in the notebook you liked and forks.

  1. Allow review comments on notebooks to spot errors, etc.

that’s a given.

Probably much much more. I am just diving into it and really like it so far!

:revolving_hearts::revolving_hearts::revolving_hearts:

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Tags, following authors, trending topics, who liked topics, comments features was also flowing in my mind :slight_smile:

They will be very good additions for already awesome ‘Observable’

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I might add: some kind of notification or indication when people fork your notebooks. So you know when you’re code is being appreciated and enhanced :slight_smile:

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Not exactly what you are asking for, but there is an RSS feed for each author. I use it and it works great for following people’s work.

In any case, all good suggestions for features that I would use.

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:sunglasses: @Evan thanks for the info on the author RSS feed urls.

Maybe just a browser notification for new published notebooks or updates by the authors you follow then, similar to how this forum site does for posts would make it more like a stream to catch up on and check out similar to ‘in case you missed’ notifications Twitter does, even though I hate how they implemented it.

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Notebooks discovery (conversation)

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Hello folks! We just launched something new: the ability to create your own collections. Here’s my profile - with 4 featured collections

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You can create a new collection by clicking + New collection on the Collections tab of your user profile, and then add notebooks by clicking Add to collection… within the ⋯ menu on a notebook. Note that, at this point, you can only add your own published notebooks to your collections.

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I’ve already been using this a bit and having some fun organizing my own works into neat little piles. Hope it’s useful to y’all as well - let us know!

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@tom This is and works really great

@RandomFractals I would add ‘ability to like the collection’'s to the feature requests

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Tom this is awesome!

Thanks for pushing this new Collections feature out

says Taras and goes on to bundling his notebooks in Collections of interest

Great job! Much Thanks!

P.S.: what I did this summer :slight_smile: https://beta.observablehq.com/@randomfractals?tab=collections

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def. would love to like the collections other users have created

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Superb! I wish we could organize unpublished work the same way.

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Small issues:

  • when using the “Add to new collection [Title]” input, there is no feedback and I ended up creating two Collections of the same name before I understood that it had worked the first time.

  • by way of consequence, when deleting a collection, the modal could clarify that deleting the collection will not delete the notebooks, just the tag.

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actually I think there is a bug with Pin checkbox. I’ve created a couple notebooks that had duplicates when I clicked on Pin, but I was able to remove the duplicate collection

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ha I see now that my collection’s URL is https://beta.observablehq.com/collection/@fil/voronoi/2 :sob:

and I don’t understand how to order the collections (“pin” doesn’t seem to do anything … and doesn’t stay unpinned)

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We’re working on giving you better feedback after creating a new collection.

Regarding collection pinning, the only thing pinning does is prioritize which four collections are displayed on your user profile, at the top of your notebooks tab: pinned collections are given priority over unpinned collections. Otherwise, collections are ordered by update time (the time at which you most recently created or edited the collection description… though in the near future it’s likely that the update time when you add a notebook to a collection). Pinning does not affect ordering on the collections tab.

Edit: I’m proposing that if you have any pinned collections, we only promote pinned collections on your user profile (similar to what GitHub does with pinned repositories). Tom and I are discussing it now.

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quick note while you are finilizing this feature:

can you make notebooks pinnable too? (mostly for devs who don’t have collections to show)

and add likes to collections? (for other users to bookmark other collections)

basically, I propose you support pins and likes for both entity types as part of heterogeneous notebooks collection users can share

also, add Likes tab to user profile similar to how we now have Notebooks and Collections. would be nice to see what others liked on on Observable

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Okay, we just deployed a couple of small enhancements.

Now if you have any pinned collections, only pinned collections will be promoted at the top of your user profile. If you have no pinned collections, however, then up to four (unpinned) collections will be promoted. This should give you a little more control over what’s shown.

We also fixed the browser cache bug that was causing the pinned status to not appear correctly in your browser when pinning or unpinning a notebook. However, note that the collections that appear at the top of your user profile may still take thirty seconds to reflect changes… so, be patient.

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minor collection description detail feature request:

since a lot of collections are centered around some JS library, would it be possible to convert http(s) links in collection description to a direct link to subject library users can open in new tab for reference?

see description on this collection for example:

or even make it .md, but I think that might be overkill, although could provide nice short overview of what that collection is for

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Another “collections” feature request: when I add a notebook to several collections it appears as the default thumbnail image for each relevant collection on my profile page, which is repetitively dull — and I have to go to each collection and reselect a different notebook for each. Would be nicer imo if those 4 thumbnails were automatically without repeats. Thanks!

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so that’s how collections thumbnails get fumbled?

I just ended up creating collection master notebook with a pic of notebooks in that collection from search to have my own ‘custom’ album remix drop cover :slight_smile: and added it last to the collection to fake it. see

I agree! Having @system do this automat would be sweet!

:hugs: