JupyterLite, if you haven’t already come across it, is an in-browser Jupyter environment that can execute Python (scipy stack) code purely within the browser. The code is executed via a WASM powered pyodide environment (essentially, a virtual machine that runs within your browser to provide a Python environment you can access from a web page). The only downside is it can take what feels like forever to download open (I’m not sure what’s cacheable and what isn’t?).
Several Jupyter environments are available:
- the full JupyterLab environment;
- a RetroLab jupyter notebook environment;
- a REPL console (I really dislike the layout of this – the “command line” is waaaaaaay down the display. I think I’d rather it were at the top of the screen, and the output displayed and scrolled under it…).
All that’s missing is a “single executable cell” mode, although there is an open issue on that. (More generally, better support for opening and saving data files to browser storage, and perhaps even disk/local file system, would also be helpful…)
If you prefer to run classic notebook purely in the browser against a pyodide kernel, use Basthon (this always seems to load much faster…). I’m not sure if English language packs are available for it…
In the JupyterLab and Retrolab environments, notebooks can be saved to and loaded from browser storage (Basthon notebook edits are also persisted in browser storage, I think?).
Interestingly, the environments can be embedded within other web pages. There are already examples of documentation sites starting to explore embedding notebook demos in the documentation website, as, for example, ipycanvas.
On the numpy docs site, a jupyterlite REPL console is embedded alongside code you can copy and paste, and then try out:
A sphinx extension, jupyterlite-sphinx, provides several directives that allow you to embed JupyterLab, Retrolab or the REPL console in Sphinx generated documentation or Jupyter Books. For the RetroLab/RetroLite enviornment, you can specify which notebook you want to embed:
One of the main issues I have with Jupyter Book in an educational use context is the inability to persist any changes the user may make to the code cell.
Embedding a RetroLite notebook gets round this to a certain extent if the user is always working from the same browser (i.e. they can access the same browser storage), because edits will be persisted to browser storage.
There are risks with persisting changes, eg if a student edits and breaks some provided code and can’t fix it, so it’d be handy if there were also a way to cache as read-only the orginal document and allow it to be restored.
Consequently, it might be useful if there were a way to disable the save-to-browser storage both as a notebook toolbar button, and as an environment setting, and expose that setting as a jupyterlite-sphinx parameter. This would then provide the option of making a notebook essentially editable and executable, but not saveable.
When using the REPL environment, I suspect that each REPL session will be in its own environment (*not tested*) which means that state will not persist across REPLs in the same page or across pages in the same book. If a single cell execution enviroment is ever supported, it would be useful for this to have three modes: stateless (always run in a new environment); page stateful (maintain state across all cells within a particular page but not across pages); and book state (persist state across all pages in a book). In the latter two cases, a big button to “restart kernel” and reset the state would also be useful.
OUseful.Info, the blog... 