Hi Observable maintainers, Thanks for building such a great framework. As an old bl.ocks user to learn D3, however, I found it a bit hard to get used to how observable works, especially at the beginning. Now every D3 example is linked to Observable, so as I try to get used to it, I found that I mi…

I partially disagree with the post arguments personally First, I liked how easy it was in bl.ocks to open a standalone web page that only contains the completed visualization and use the browser console to inspect elements and fiddle things. With Observable, I was hoping such an “open” button cou…

[image] bumbeishvili: Observable consists of multi-cell blocks and “open” button exist at the left side of every cell. Fiddling things is much easier on Observable than on bl.ocks The open button on Bl.ocks I was referring to opens another weg page that contains only the visualization. That w…

[image] bgchen: There’s some related discussion in this thread: I want to learn D3. I don`t want to learn Observable. Is that ok? Thanks, I found it as well after I posted. That post was mainly meaningless rant. Hopefully I helped point out things that are blockers for people like me.

You should be able to access the iFrame that your notebook content is rendered into using the dev tools. Unfortunately, the cells are not accessible from the console by default, but you should still be able to access the DOM. That is a good feature request though — since there’s already safe mode w…

You should be able to use your browser’s element inspector as normal by right-clicking on any element and clicking Inspect. Is that not working for you? [46]

thanks, that works. I guess in the first few tries I was clicking on some blank area, and somehow the browser brought me to other page elements.

Personally I find that Observable (a) makes reading [well-written] code examples much easier, and (b) makes writing them dramatically easier. The non-linearity (with excel-style reactive updates) that you are having some trouble with is the most import part of that. In a regular repl, Mathematica …

Yes, the power that non-linear order possesses goes without saying – I already feelin it after fiddling with some notebooks. I’ll try a few more days, but my strong suspicion right now is that a non-linear order is perfect for fiddling and communicating stories but not necessarily for new learners …

One thing that can help is to see the graph. Try pasting a notebook’s link into https://observablehq.com/@mbostock/notebook-visualizer For example, https://observablehq.com/@mbostock/notebook-visualizer?id=@jrus/munsell-spin Feature request: It might be useful to someday make this a built-in featu…

thoughts from someone who liked using bl.ocks to learn D3

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bgchen July 5, 2019, 2:50pm 3

There’s some related discussion in this thread: I want to learn D3. I don`t want to learn Observable. Is that ok?

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thoughts from someone who liked using bl.ocks to learn D3

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