[IPython-dev] Just looking for feedback before PR

[Carl Smith]

Cheers for the detailed feedback Brian

>  I see that you have just applied these styles to text cells, rather than
> the rendered_html class.  Right now the tour version you are dealing with
> puts the heading cells in the markdown rather than using actual heading
> cells.  I have a PR open that updates all example notebooks to use actual
> heading cells:
>
> I think we want to have these styles applied to the heading cells, as well
> as HTML output, so I would use the rendered_html class.

That's an easy edit. No problem.

Can I just ask why we have header cells at all? It may be a daft
question, but I always used Markdown to create headers, so I never
knew what the header cells were for. Is there a good reason to have
more than just code and Markdown cells?

> But there are a few bigger issues here - I think I missed the earlier
> discussion - so I feel like I am playing catch up.  Some general thoughts on
> this.

It was discussed while the ML was very quiet. I think John Hunter was
ill at the time. I remember the list being really quiet for a couple
of weeks.

> * There is a very specific look I have been trying to create with the
> notebook, namely that of a clean, empty piece of white paper.  This means
> have a very simple, uncluttered look with an absolute minimum number of
> visual distractions and minimal styling.  Even adding the subtle shading to
> the code cell's input area was a difficult decision, but one that I think
> does make sense.  I think this is really important and is a key part of the
> notebook's user experience.  In light of this, I think the style you have
> created, while very good looking, doesn't match these overall design goals.
> Because of this, I don't think it makes sense to have it as the default.

I understand your point here. I really like the Notebook's super clean
look, and know minimalism is more difficult to get right than it seems
like it would be until you've tried it. I'll come back to this point.

> * I regularly use custom styles in markdown cells to customize the look of
> individual notebooks.  This is such a simple and elegant solution for
> customization.  We should create a place on the github wiki that points to
> css files on gists that have nice styles such as this, that users can plug
> into notebooks.  If this turns out to be a nice way of working, we could
> think about including this customization point in the notebook's (yet to be
> written) configuration UI.

Maybe we could explore adding a simple stylesheet to each new Notebook
profile. When the profile is used, the Notebook could check for that
stylesheet file. If the file is empty or absent, then no style is
applied, else it'll use whatever's in the stylesheet.

This means users with a few profiles and no incentive to edit the
styles would have a few copies of the same file on disc, but these are
small files and are not using any RAM. The benefits would be that
there'd be no need for a new config option, just delete the file to
disable the styles, the user would have a readily accessible file to
hack at, the file serves as a template, which is handy for those of us
who know very little CSS, and it allows profile based configuration.

> * I am willing to consider changing the notebook styling, but there has to
> be a clearly identified problem each change is solving.  One change that I
> have thought about is that the current heading styles take up a bit too much
> vertical space.  That makes it difficult to view notebooks on screens with
> small vertical real estate.  This is a very specific problem that has a
> specific, focused solution.

As it stands, I don't personally see any reason to change the Notebook
styling at all, but I haven't used the header cells, so I can't
comment on that issue. I really like the look of the Notebook, and I'm
naturally a merciless critic when it comes to art and design. It's my
background.

> * In general, we are using a small amount of border radius on all of our
> rectangles with borders.  The sharp corners of the heading divs look
> inconsistent with the rest of the UI look.

An easy edit.

> * I think the fill colors of the different heading levels need to have a
> more consistent color scheme.  For example, right now the h1 color is grey,
> but the h2 level is the same as the code cells.  Could you try to just
> lighten or darken the code cell's fill color for the different heading
> levels?

Is that a typo, or are you asking me to change the *code cell* fill
colour? I'm thinking to lighten up the headers. I've no reason to edit
the code cell CSS. It looks spot on already.

> * I am finding that font size used in notebooks is very specific to the
> purpose of the notebook.  For example, in presentations I up the font-size
> dramatically.  I see you are using a larger font size (16pt for text) that
> may or may not make sense for users.

That's probably just my personal taste coming through. I love
anti-aliasing, so I tend to give every character plenty of pixels to
play with. It probably looks a bit too big to most people.

> * It would be wonderful if we could start to use less for all of our css -
> even cooler if users could enter css using less in markdown cells.  That
> would make it *much* easier to tune the look with a few lines of css/less.

This sounds like a good idea, but I've not actually used less to know
how well it works. I'll look it up tonight.

I'm glad you like the general idea, and it's really valuable to hear
the thoughts of such an experienced user. You can foresee cases that
I'm not envisioning, where my approach might not be a good fit.

Thanks again for your time Brian.

Cheers

Carl