Today we’re launching a bold new vision: an open-source static site generator — Observable Framework — for creating fast, beautiful data apps you can host anywhere. Use JavaScript for interactive graphics with Python, R, or any language for data analysis.
We're excited to announce Observable Plot, a new open-source library for faster and easier data exploration on the web! 📈🚀
Plot's concise API and thoughtful defaults are designed for a more joyful visualization process, try out the beta and let us know!
Reactivity is awesome, intimidating, and confusing. It’s fundamental to Observable but we haven’t made it clear or obvious. We’re part notebook, part spreadsheet, and we should help people see that. Like, I mean, SEE it. So we’re launching Visual Dataflow:
We are so excited to announce Plot Cheatsheets - an interactive overview with printable PDFs to explore each of the foundational concepts of the Observable Plot library including: Marks, Scales, Transforms, Layout & Colors
Writing data wrangling code can be challenging, so we built the Data Wrangler to help compose and preview transformations using the amazing Arquero package (by
@uwdata
//
@jeffrey_heer
). Check it out!
It’s here! 🎉 Announcing Observable for Teams: The magic notebook for teams to think, together. Unlimited private notebooks, multiplayer editing, comments and shared secrets.
🗳 Nobody knows what the outcome of the presidential election will be — but with a radial dendrogram you can try to visualize all the possibilities at once:
👀
#dataviz
#Election2020
#DataVisualization
Observable may be the future of programming, but starting today we also support the past.
✨Announcing History!✨
Browse old versions of notebooks; tweak to explore alternative timelines; then revert, fork or merge.
📎 Attach files to your Observable notebooks! 📎
JSON, CSV, PNG, SHP… you name it. Files are fetch-able, import-able, stream-able, diff-able, suggest-able, and more.
🤔 Are you comfortable doing data science in
#Python
, but want to leverage the interactive nature of
#JavaScript
?
👉 Check out our newest tutorial on learning JavaScript for python users and learn JavaScript basics in no time here:
🎉 We're excited to launch real-time collaboration on Observable!
Invite up to 4 other people to co-edit 🎮 real-time with you! 🤜 🤛
Learn more about Collaborating in Observable - . 💞
Looking forward to working with you! 💃
#dataviz
Observable: The User Manual
We’ve (but let’s be serious, mostly Mike has) written a mountain of reference material over the past year that covers how to effectively realize the notebooks of your dreams
Here it is on 1 page. Bookmark it. Send suggestions
📣Today we are launching an easier way to embed your fully interactive
#dataviz
from Observable to other platforms where you want to share your work!
Check out our announcement for more information ➡️
The quickest way to see your data in a chart with Observable is with Vega-Lite. In less than 10 lines of code, take the first step to exploring your data visually.
The
#d3js
10 Year Celebration Kick-off event is tomorrow with announcements for the D3 community and reflections on lessons learned from 10 years of
#opensource
data visualization 🎉
👉
hosted by
@enjalot
. Speakers include
@mbostock
@mmeckf
@sxywu
& More
The
@ieeevis
awarded our co-founder
@mbostock
with the Test of Time award for his D3 submission - the most cited paper they reviewed. 😎 Way to go Mike!
Election maps can mislead when colored regions are sized to the land area instead of the number of votes.
@karim_douieb
shows how in his notebook:
#dataviz
#Election2020
Challenge accepted! Here is a transition between surface area of US counties and their associated population. This arguably provides a much more accurate reading of the situation.
@observablehq
notebook:
#HowChartsLie
#DataViz
#d3js
When you aggregate & simplify data, you often lose the signal & context needed to make sense of what you are seeing. Join us for a deep dive on the topic & let us know your thoughts! 👇
If you want to quickly code an interactive report or analysis and email it to colleagues or host it on an intranet, integrating
@rstudio
or
@ThePSF
and Observable
@JavaScript
in
@quarto_pub
could be a great choice. Learn more:
🎨📊 Ever wondered how top-notch web visualizations are made? Discover
@d3js_org
with us, from web essentials to dynamic interactions.
Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, there's something for everyone.
👉
💫 Introducing Observable Ambassadors: folks who are passionate about visualizing data & supporting the community.
"Observable matters because of the creative & inspiring members of the community." ❤️️
@Cass_Ferrara
Learn More 👉
See how your cells connect with the improved Minimap in the Observable Next sidebar — now showing multiplayer presence and previews of all cells, and available on mobile under the notebook menu. More info:
Observable Plot is a free, open-source JavaScript library to help you quickly visualize tabular data. It has a concise and (hopefully) memorable API to foster fluency — and plenty of examples to learn from and copy-paste.
#observableplot
#dataviz
A Voronoi Cloth built on Observable!
Developed for the LIRIS M2i project by Sylvain Lesage.
A mashup of Voronoi Particules and Cloth Simulation using relaxed constraints solver from Three.js examples.
👀
#dataviz
In 2020,
@observablehq
team grew from 6 to 19! Empathy is on our minds more than ever, and remembering to focus on human needs first. 💕
We put ourselves in your shoes by using Observable, we share in your joys & frustrations as users.
❓Is there anything you need from us?
We created the free
#dataviz
tool below to illustrate how data visualization can help better inform users before they delete their Twitter accounts and abandon years of valuable data.
Save & analyze your trove of data before it is gone forever.
👉
We're Hiring!
We are looking for people who are compassionate advocates for developers and have the audacity to tackle some of development’s greatest challenges. Looking for developer advocates, designers, researchers, and developers in our SF office.
Everyone loves PDFs, right? Our latest notebook walkthrough is all about parsing and transforming 'em, and shows you what it's like to do exploratory coding in Observable
Happy Solstice! This shows the Sun’s path throughout the year from San Francisco’s point of view; the loop was tightest and spent the most time above the horizon (i.e. inside the black circle) yesterday. See it for your location:
Observable is committed to equality for all of our community, its creators, and our employees.
We are committed to prioritizing marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort and to support the efforts to end racism.
#BlackLivesMatter
If you want to embed custom, dynamic visualizations written in JavaScript into Jupyter notebooks, check out how to get data into Observable and get a chart back into Jupyter:
Observable is hiring!
Join our team as a...
- Community Manager
- Content Marketing Manager
- Data Scientist
- Designer
- Developer
- Developer Advocate
- Office Manager
- Product Manager
- Product Marketing Lead
- UX Researcher
for more.
In this notebook,
@recifs
steps through how to make a contour map of live air quality data from
@airnow
using Plot. The air in the northeast is, as you may have heard, bad.
The Observable team is hiring!
We are looking for
- Developer Advocates (and lead)
- Developers (software and data viz)
- User Experience Researchers
- Designers
- Product Managers
- Product Marketing Lead
- Recruiter
To learn more, check out
🗓️ SAVE THE DATE!
Beginning on March 7th, Data Visualization Developer Robert Kosara
@eagereyes
will lead Observable's course on Data Visualization Fundamentals and Best Practices.
👀 Be on the lookout next week when we share the sign-up link!
Data Journalists
@xavigimenez
&
@MarieSegger
at
@TheEconomist
outline how Observable notebooks, data visualization libraries, and other data-related tools free up time to explore, ideate, experiment and ultimately craft the best data-driven stories.
👉
We created a collection of curated datasets for our community to get started:
📊Google Merchandise Sales Data
📈Bandcamp Sales Data
⚡️EIA Electricity Data
🌤NOAA Hourly Weather Data
💹Plot Test Data
🌍U.S. Geographic Data
➡️
Excited to see what you create!
Great shout out 📢 from one of our favorite sites
@flowingdata
- check out these data science illustrations from recently joined Observable team member
@allison_horst
BIG NEWS: Observable is now integrated in
#MicrosoftTeams
, helping Microsoft customers make better business decisions using data. We are thrilled to be a
@msPartner
! 🤝
#MSPartner
🎉 Feature launch: You can now create custom URLs for ALL of your notebooks regardless of whether they are published or private. This should make it easier to discover, share & organize your notebooks. 😎
Check out our announcement for more details ⬇️
Our new Data Wrangler helps you write code to ask questions of your data, like: "Which olympic sport has had the most competitors over time?" Check it out!
Today we introduced a new modal to create notebooks from Templates - just click on the icon and select the template you want to start with. Here it is in action:
📢Meetup 8/27: All about D3!
'From Ideation to Interactive Essay with D3' ➡️
@wattenberger
'Teaching Visualization Through D3 ' ➡️
@mf_viz
Followed up with an AMA from D3 creator & our co-founder
@mbostock
+ some updates on Observable from
@mmeckf
📆
📺 New video series!
Learning Observable:
@AnjanaVakil
explains core concepts & techniques for working with
@ObservableHQ
notebooks 📓✨
Watch & Subscribe 👉
More videos coming soon!
Data is the world’s most powerful asset. We are building an environment where anyone can collaborate with data to more fully understand & communicate the story it tells.
Do you build in
@Matplotlib
with
#Python
? If so, we have the perfect guide for you! Our newest tutorial focuses on making common
#Matplotlib
charts with Observable Plot - including interactive histograms & scatterplots!
✍️ We're excited to announce Cell Modes!
JavaScript, Markdown, HTML, and TeX Cell Modes.
We want to make it as easy as possible for you to write different types of content, not just code in the notebook!💞
Learn more about Cell Modes in Release Notes ➡️
Curious about cartographic coding w/ Turf.js?
Mystified by magic morphing w/ D3 & SVG?
Animated by arty animating w/ Canvas?
Then join us & ambassador
@OliviaFVane
for a livestream about making wonderful waterline maps! 🌊🗺️✨
Tue July 27 9am PT 📺
📢 Our next course is here! Advanced Data Visualization: Techniques, Interaction, and Data Patterns led
@eagereyes
! Join us starting June 13th at 9 AM PT/12 PM ET.
Register now and dive into the world of captivating visualizations:
Weekly we're updating our Explore page with Staff picks and Featured creators. This week we've added
@MAKIO135
notebook and
@duto_guerra
to staff picks. Thanks for creating on
@observablehq
!
👀 See all Staff picks and Featured creators here 👉
🌟We will be going LIVE with our very first virtual meetup on 3/24 at 6p PST!
➡️
@mmeckf
on visualization and dev workflows
&
➡️
@visnup
with a crash course on vega-lite
More details 👀
See you there! 👋
We're thrilled to have
@sxywu
joining our stream next week! Shirley,
@MollzMP
&
@mf_viz
will be diving into a dataset to see how Plot can help with data exploration, the first step of all good
#dataviz
!
Join us Fri July 9 at 9am PT! 📺
Details & RSVP:
⌨️ Write and edit faster, without taking your hands off the keyboard. New cell shortcuts let you do pretty much anything in Observable without touching that mouse.
Dependency graphs are tricky:
① They’re overwhelming — so we show only direct dependencies (plus hints of transitive ones).
② They’re underconstrained — so we use your chosen document order as a meaningful vertical position.
📝 Free and open source licenses are a great way to give other people certainty that they’re allowed to reuse and remix your work. Observable now has built-in support for licensing your notebooks!
📣 New feature! Chart cell. It simplifies the workflow and allows you to visually explore your data without any coding required. Accelerate your time to insights and try it out today!
👉
🎛️ 📊 Interactive dashboards: Our latest blog expands on building dashboards with Observable Framework and Plot, showing how to add interactivity and deliver higher value insights to end-users.
Dive in!
Plus: we provide an installable database proxy, if you need to connect to a local or intranet database. So you can keep data & credentials entirely on your system.
It's a celebration! 🎉 Observable Plot turns two today, and we couldn't be more proud of its impact on the data community.
🥳Here's to more intuitive, interactive, and informative visualizations in the years to come! 🚀
🎨 The right color choices can bring your charts and dashboards to life. Learn best practices for effectively choosing colors for your displays of data in this new blog post.
💡Join us TOMORROW for our final session with
@allison_horst
. We will explore new data wrangling methods, leveraging DuckDB for seamless JS and SQL integration & more.
🎟️ Sign up here: