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Research UI Improvements
Jamie McCorriston
posted Sep 7, 2018
Q Updates Research

Today, we made some improvements to the interface and appearance of the Research environment. The changes add some functionality to the notebook development workflow, and update the appearance to look more like the rest of the Quantopian website. Here are some of the notable changes:

  • The markdown styling has been changed to improve readability. The attached notebook shows off some of the new markdown styles.
  • DataFrames have a new display style (see example in the attached notebook).
  • There is now a 'Run Cell' button (looks like a play button) that appears next to each cell when you hover over it.
  • Navigating your list of notebooks (and moving between folders) is now faster. Previously, the page had to be reloaded every time you change directories. Page reloads are no longer necessary, so folder navigation is faster.
  • You can copy and paste cells between notebooks, using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V (Cmd-C and Cmd-V on Mac).

There are also a couple of new menu items:

  • "Toggle line numbers" - show/hide line numbers within cells.
  • "Download as rst" - another "download as" option.

As usual, let us know if you have any questions.

Happy coding!

Disclaimer

The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian. In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.

7 responses
Joakim Arvidsson (Cream Mongoose)
Sep 8, 2018

Hi @Jamie,

Cosmetic upgrades are nice, but how critical was this really? And 'Run cell' button, when one can just as easily (and faster) press 'Shift + Enter' to run a cell?

Any hope for the ability to move notebooks and algos to folders. Or is this too difficult to implement, or not prioritized for some other reason?

Thanks for the continued improvement of the platform though. I hope I'm not coming across as overly complaining.

Joakim

Grant Kiehne
Sep 8, 2018

Thanks Jamie -

Similar to Joakim’s feedback, I’m wondering if there would be a forum and logging/tracking mechanism for user input on various potential platform improvements? If you were to include input from your Enterprise users, it would be helpful. I’d be interested to get a sense for what professionals would need.

Jamie McCorriston
Sep 8, 2018

@Joakim,

The Research environment is built on top of Project Jupyter. The changes I mentioned above came from an upgrade to the version of Jupyter used by Research. The upgrade to Jupyter was a necessary pre-requisite to the moving notebooks to folders requested feature. I can tell you that adding the ability to move notebooks into folders is on our list (I have hundreds of notebooks in my top-level directory, I understand the need). That said, I don't have a strict timeline as to when the feature will be available.

Your feedback is always appreciated!

Joakim Arvidsson (Cream Mongoose)
Sep 8, 2018

Fair enough, thanks Jamie. I appreciate the update!

Michael Matthews
Sep 16, 2018

It seems there is a bug in creating new notebooks. I am currently trying to create a new notebook in a folder that I created. However, when I navigate to the folder and then click the new notebook button. The notebook goes into the root directory instead of the folder I created.

Pej H
Sep 16, 2018

Moving algo's to dedicated folders would be exponentially more valuable than seeing nice fonts. But I understand it was a Jupyter version upgrade.

Jamie McCorriston
Sep 18, 2018

@Michael: Thanks for pointing out that issue. I was able to reproduce it. We're working on a fix.

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The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian.

In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.