[IPython-dev] Kernel busy/idle indicators in notebook

Fernando Perez fperez.net at gmail.com
Mon Jan 20 20:56:33 EST 2014


I also think that a more static, and muted indicator, would be great to
have. I'm pretty allergic myself to flashing in my visual field and do find
the current model mildly distracting.

We'd toyed with having a little button that would switch from green (idle)
to red (busy), but it may be visually a bit too jarring. Perhaps a simple
circle are that goes from filled (busy) to open (idle) will be sufficient,
with an on-hover that says "Kernel {idle, busy}" to help new users learn
the meaning.

cheers,

f


On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Thomas Kluyver <takowl at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think you're right, those notifications are unnecessarily noisy. And I
> like the idea of a small icon that indicates when the kernel is working,
> perhaps at the right hand end of the title bar. I might have a go at this
> tomorrow - I've been meaning to spend some more time in the JS.
>
> Thomas
>
>
> On 20 January 2014 09:17, Jason Grout <jason-sage at creativetrax.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've been meaning to bring this up for a while, but hesitated because
>> it's somewhat a bike-shedding issue.  I'll throw it out there, though,
>> as a small thing that I think detracts (and distracts) from the user
>> interface of the notebook.
>>
>> Right now, it seems that when the kernel starts executing, the words
>> "Kernel Busy" flash up in the upper right of the notebook, and when the
>> kernel stops, "Kernel Idle" flashes up there.  In cases where you have
>> lots of computations being sent back and forth (for example, when
>> playing with the new interactive widgets), this activity in the
>> interface in the corner of my viewing angle gets rather distracting.  It
>> even gets distracting (for me) when executing normal computations---I
>> see a flicker of something when a result is returned, and automatically
>> glance towards the flicker and see it is just the kernel idle message
>> flashing up.  This needless distraction breaks concentration and
>> detracts from the content that just appeared.
>>
>> Proposal 1: eliminate the kernel busy/idle indicators from the main
>> interface.  We already have the indicator in the input prompts when
>> executing normal cells (e.g., [*] instead of [number]).  We could put
>> some indicator of kernel status in the menu if it seemed necessary.
>>
>> Proposal 2: Make the kernel busy/idle status indicators much less
>> distracting by making it a small muted icon or filled circle, similar to
>> a hard drive or ethernet port activity light, that only is displayed
>> when the kernel is busy, but turned off when the kernel is idle.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Jason
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>
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-- 
Fernando Perez (@fperez_org; http://fperez.org)
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