Jupyter Notebook Extensions

With Anaconda you can download and install several new extensions for the Jupyter Notebook that make the notebook easier to use.

Summary of extensions

  • Notebook Present: Turn your notebooks into powerful PowerPoint-style presentations.
  • Notebook Anaconda Cloud: Upload your notebook and optionally, its conda environment, to your Anaconda Cloud account with the push of a button.
  • Notebook Conda: Provides Conda environment and package access from within Jupyter Notebook.
  • Notebook Conda Kernels: Use conda environment-based kernels from dashboard and the notebook’s Kernel menu

How to get the extensions

To get the Jupyter Notebook Extensions, Anaconda users can do any of the following:

Anaconda Enterprise Notebooks users

These Jupyter Notebooks extensions are already installed in your system in all AEN 4.1 and newer installations. No need to install separately. Just open a new or existing notebook and begin using them.

Anaconda Navigator

The Notebook Extensions packages can be installed and managed like any other packages, as described in the page on User guide.

Then from your Navigator Home tab, open your Jupyter Notebook to see the new extensions.

Command line

To install all Jupyter Notebook Extensions run:

conda install nb_conda

There are four Notebook Extensions: Notebook Present (nbpresent), Notebook Anaconda Cloud (nb_anacondacloud), Notebook Conda (nb_conda), and Notebook Conda Kernels (nb_conda_kernels).

Installing any one of the four will install all four. The _nb_ext_conf package will also be installed, which activates the extensions.

Uninstall

To remove all Jupyter Notebook Extensions run:

conda remove nb_conda

Uninstalling nb_conda or any other one of the four extensions will uninstall all four.

To disable Jupyter Notebook Extensions individually, but not uninstall them, run:

python -m nb_conda_kernels.install --disable --prefix=<ENV_PREFIX>

jupyter-nbextension disable nb_conda --py --sys-prefix
jupyter-serverextension disable nb_conda --py --sys-prefix

jupyter-nbextension disable nb_anacondacloud --py --sys-prefix
jupyter-serverextension disable nb_anacondacloud --py --sys-prefix

jupyter-nbextension disable nbpresent --py --sys-prefix
jupyter-serverextension disable nbpresent --py --sys-prefix

Note: <ENV_PREFIX> can be the root environment or any other conda environment where the extensions have been installed.

1. Notebook Present

Turns your notebook into a PowerPoint-style presentation. Two new buttons are visible in your top menu bar: Edit Presentation, and Show Presentation:

../_images/nb-ext-present1.png

To begin using Notebook Present, click the Edit Presentation button. A black bar with several menu items appears on the right side of your browser. As you click each icon, the menu and layout of your screen changes.

../_images/nb-ext-present2.png

Click the Help icon to view three quick tours of the main features of Notebook Present. The tours are: Intro Tour, Slides Tour, and Editor Tour.

Intro tour

Click Help - Intro to see a 2-minute presentation on how to use all of the main features. Every button is explained, and you can pause, go back to the previous slide, or the next slide. Here is a summary of the presentation.

App Bar: When Authoring, you control the content and style of your presentation. It also activates several special editing keyboard shortcuts:

../_images/nb-ext-shortcuts.png

Stop Authoring: Clicking the Edit Presentation button again stops Authoring, and removes all keyboard shortcuts.

Show Presentation: If you just want to run your presentation without using any Authoring tools, just click the Show Presentation button.

Presenting/Authoring: Once you’ve made some slides, start Presenting, where you can use most Notebook functions with the Theme we have defined, as well as customize slides on the fly.

Slides button: Slides, made of Regions linked to Cell Parts are the bread and butter of any presentation, and can be imported, created, linked, reordered, and edited here.

../_images/nb-ext-slides1.png

Theming: Theming lets you select from existing colors, typography, and backgrounds to make distinctive presentations. The first theme you select will become the default, while you can choose custom themes for a particular slide, like a title.

../_images/nb-ext-themes.png

Saving: Whenever you save your Notebook, all your presentation data will be stored right in the Notebook .ipynb file.

Downloading: After you’ve made a presentation, you can download it as an HTML page by choosing Download → Download As: Presentation (.html) in the menu.

Help: Activate Help at any time to try other tours, connect with the Present developers and community, and other information.

Using slides

From the Help menu, clicking Slides brings up the following 2-minute presentation on how to create and manage slides:

../_images/nb-ext-slides2.png

Slides make up a presentation. Clicking Slides toggles the sorter view and the Slide Toolbar.

Slide Toolbar: Let’s create a new slide. Clicking the + Slide will offer some choices for creating your new slide.

Import: The quickest way to a presentation is to just import every complete cell as a slide. If you’ve already created slides with the official slideshow cell toolbar or RISE, you can import most of the content.

Template Library: You can also pick from some existing templates...

Reuse Slide as Template: Or copy an existing slide.

Simple Template: A common template is the Quad Chart, with four pieces of content arranged in a grid.

Region: The Quad Chart has four Regions. Select a region by clicking it.

Linking a Region to a Cell Part: Each Region can be linked to a single Cell Part

Link Overlay: The Link Overlay shows all of the parts available

Cell Part: Source (blue): Source, such as code and Markdown text

Cell Part: Outputs (red): Outputs, such as rich figures and script results

Cell Part: Widgets (purple): Jupyter widgets, interactive widgets that provide both visualization and user input.

Cell Part: Whole (orange): Finally, a Whole Cell (including its Source, Widgets, and Outputs) can be linked to a single region

Part Thumbnail: We’ll try to draw a part thumbnail. It can only be reliably updated when a linked Cell Part is on-screen when you mouse over it, but you should usually be able to get an idea of what you’re seeing. The colors of the regions correspond to the cell types.

Cell Part: Unlinking: Unlinking removes the connection between a region and a cell part, without deleting either one.

Region: Trashing: Trashing a Region permanently deletes it, without affecting any linked Cell Part

Presenting: Clicking the Present button while editing brings up the Presenter with editing mode still enabled:

It’s still a Notebook: Linked inputs and widgets are still interactive.

Go forward: Click to go to the next slide

Go back: Click to go back to the previous slide

Go back to the beginning: Click here to go back to the first slide

My work is done here: Click to go back to the Notebook.

Using the editor

When you click Help - Editor, you see the following 2-minute presentation on editing your notebook:

So You Made Some Slides: Once you’ve made a few slides, you’ll likely need to customize them

Editing Slides: Once you have selected a slide, you can activate the Slide Editor by double-clicking the slide, or clicking Edit Slide.

Region Editor: This is the Region editor. You can click and drag Regions around and resize them.

Region Tree: This is the Region tree. It lets you reorder Regions and see the details of how your Regions will show their linked Parts.

Add Region: You can add new regions

Attribute Editor: All of the properties of a region can be edited here

Data Layouts: In addition to manually moving regions around, you can use other Layouts, like this Treemap, which will fill the slide:

More Regions: More regions will be added with a weight of 1

Tree Weight: This new value lets you make a Region bigger or smaller based on relative Weight

12 Grid: The Grid is a compromise between Free layout and Treemap layout, and rounds all the values to a factor of 12.

2. Notebook Anaconda Cloud

Upload your notebook to your Anaconda Cloud account with the push of a button:

../_images/nb-ext-acloud1.png

Optionally, a copy of your conda environment (environment.yaml) can be embedded in the metadata.

NOTE: You must have an Anaconda Cloud account for this extension to work. You can sign up for a free account at anaconda.org.

If you haven’t signed in to Anaconda Cloud before, a dialog box appears asking for your Anaconda Cloud username and password.

Or if you already have an account, you may login at the command line:

anaconda login

NOTE: This is recommended if you do not have a secure connection.

To begin, open Jupyter Notebook, then open the notebook you wish to upload to Anaconda Cloud. In the top navigation bar, click the “Publish to Anaconda Cloud” button:

../_images/nb-ext-acloud1.png

The following dialog box appears:

../_images/nb-ext-acloud4.png

Select your username, write a description of the notebook that will appear on Anaconda Cloud, and optionally check the “Attach conda environment” box if you want the identical environment to be included when the notebook is downloaded and opened. Then click the “Publish” button.

After publishing, you can view the notebook or play the presentation on Anaconda Cloud from the top navigation bar by clicking the cloud button:

../_images/nb-ext-acloud6.png

Your notebook on Anaconda Cloud will look similar to this one:

../_images/nb-ext-acloud5.png

For more help using Anaconda Cloud, see https://docs.continuum.io/anaconda-cloud/

3. Notebook Conda

Provides Conda environment and package access from within Jupyter Notebook.

Manage all environments While viewing the dashboard file manager, select the Conda tab. This shows your current conda environments:

../_images/nb-ext-conda1.png

After you have selected an environment by clicking its name, you’ll see the package management section display below it.

You can also add a new conda environment by clicking the “+” button above the list of environments.

../_images/nb-ext-conda3.png

Icons from left to right: Search for packages in your current environment, refresh your packages list, update selected packages, or remove selected packages.

NOTE: For more information on using and managing conda packages, see http://conda.pydata.org/docs/using/pkgs.html

Manage Current Kernel Environment

From the Kernel menu, select Conda Packages:

../_images/nb-ext-conda2.png

This displays a list of the Conda Packages in the current environment. The icons are the same as above: Search for packages in your current environment, refresh your packages list, update selected packages, or remove selected packages.

4. Notebook Conda Kernels

This extension makes the Notebook aware of your conda environments, and is required for Notebook Anaconda Cloud and Notebook Conda. When creating a new notebook, from the Files tab, you can pick any of the Python or R language kernels in any of your environments:

../_images/nb-ext-kernel1.png

Or change to those kernels on a current notebook:

../_images/nb-ext-kernel2.png