Collaborative Environment
Observable allows multiple users to collaborate in real-time, making it easier for teams to work together on data visualizations and analyses.
Reactive Programming
The platform supports reactive programming, where changes in data automatically trigger updates in the visualizations, enhancing interactivity and reducing the need for manual updates.
Built-in Data Visualization Libraries
Observable integrates seamlessly with popular libraries like D3, Plotly, and Leaflet, providing powerful tools for creating complex and interactive data visualizations.
Notebook Interface
The notebook interface is user-friendly and allows for easy documentation and sharing. Users can combine code, visualizations, and markdown text in a single document.
Extensive Resources and Community Support
Observable has a rich set of tutorials, examples, and a strong community, making it easier for new users to learn and get help.
Customizability
Users have the flexibility to customize their visualizations extensively, thanks to the open-ended nature of JavaScript and the supported libraries.
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Observable is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface and powerful capabilities. It is particularly valued in environments where collaboration and interactive data exploration are essential. While it may have a learning curve for beginners, its features and community support make it a worthwhile tool for data-driven projects.
We have collected here some useful links to help you find out if Observable is good.
Check the traffic stats of Observable on SimilarWeb. The key metrics to look for are: monthly visits, average visit duration, pages per visit, and traffic by country. Moreoever, check the traffic sources. For example "Direct" traffic is a good sign.
Check the "Domain Rating" of Observable on Ahrefs. The domain rating is a measure of the strength of a website's backlink profile on a scale from 0 to 100. It shows the strength of Observable's backlink profile compared to the other websites. In most cases a domain rating of 60+ is considered good and 70+ is considered very good.
Check the "Domain Authority" of Observable on MOZ. A website's domain authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). It is based on a 100-point logarithmic scale, with higher scores corresponding to a greater likelihood of ranking. This is another useful metric to check if a website is good.
The latest comments about Observable on Reddit. This can help you find out how popualr the product is and what people think about it.
Cheysson and other cross hatched patterns will get you a long way [0]. [0]: https://observablehq.com/@tomshanley/cheysson-color-palettes. - Source: Hacker News / 6 days ago
Love all D3 content, but I'd add that the data binding just to create svg is not the real reason - after all, you can do this declaratively using most modern frameworks by directly iterating over the data and returning a positioned element (fwiw this is how I prefer to use it today). The reason is because of the complexity within d3 selection, namely the enter/update/exit + transition capabilities:... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
You inspired me to submit my old article https://observablehq.com/@jrus/spheredisksample https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44963521 to fit the trend of the day. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
Const research_msg = `Generate some ideas on how how this prompt might be improved, perhaps using web research\nCURRENT PROMPT:\n${prompt}\n${trace}` source: https://observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/gepa#reflectFn but I would need quite a few distinct tasks to do that and task setup is the laborious part (getting quicker now I optimized the notebook coding agent). - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
Recently tried out the new GEPA algorithm for prompt evolution with great results. I think using LLMs to write their own prompt and analyze their trajectories is pretty neat once appropriate guardrails are in place https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19457 https://observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/gepa I guess GEPA is still preprint and before this survey but I recommend taking a look due to it's simplicity. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
I actually investigated this exact thing (phone booths as advertising vectors) a little while ago: https://observablehq.com/@mjbo/sydney-qms-panel-public-telephone-pairings To cut to the chase, I think local councils are really upset that Telstra has the right to put these anywhere they want. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
Have a look at https://observablehq.com/ and just poke around. It's a neat tool that solves a lot of specific sharing/visualization problems (think of newsroom data analysis). I like observable but I hate how much it feels like the service has been taken over by product managers looking for that next bump. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
Marimo is very impressive. It's effectively a cross between Jupyter and https://observablehq.com/ - it adds "reactivity", which solves the issue where Jupyter cells can be run in any order which can make the behavior of a notebook unpredictable, whereas in Marimo (and Observable) updating a cell automatically triggers other dependent cells to re-execute, similar to a spreadsheet. Marimo is pretty new (first... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
Thanks! I agree that in the few example images you've shown it looks quite natural. In other implementations I could always see "ghosts" of the Hilbert curve in the resulting image (usually these were 1-bit images, that might have been a factor), so that used to turn me off of it a bit, even though I find it a very elegant algorithm. On the note of matrix based error diffusion exploring other methods, maybe you'd... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
Isn't it more a matter of how space is folded in higher dimensions rather than an increase in volume that accounts for containment? There is plenty of space in the corners after all[0]. [0]: https://observablehq.com/@tophtucker/theres-plenty-of-room-in-the-corners#Fig2. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
Using other constants in place of the ‘4’ can lead to some _really_ gigantic smallest solutions: https://observablehq.com/@robinhouston/a-remarkable-diophantine-equation. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
"Observable is obnoxious if you want to add a D3 pie chart to your Vue application and have to untangle calls to D3’s API from reactive cell values, which look like ordinary JavaScript, but are not, and will cause compilation and runtime errors when copied." Yep - as I wrote: "If you want to just blindly copy and paste d3 code, you may have issues with the docs being hosted on observable." If instead you learn the... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
I'd imagine many nested named capturing groups may trip even the best automated system! I do like the solution though. I would've probably approached it differently, trying to first get the 'inverted' match (i.e. Not matching anything that isn't a currency like pattern) and refine from there. A bit like this one I did a while back, to parse garbled strings that may occur after OCR [0]. I imagine the approach does... - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
Was looking for some mention of Mike Bostock and his epic odyssey into this space. For those who aren't familiar https://observablehq.com/@mbostock. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
I experimented with an Ohm/CodeMirror bridge that would map an Ohm grammar to CodeMirror classes for marks and syntax highlighting. It might be an interesting starting point for you: https://observablehq.com/@ajbouh/editor. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
I have a fork of this that inverts the light model from additive to subtractive and suddenly its like ink in water https://observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/ink. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
I built a tool to help me do that: https://observablehq.com/@simonw/wrap-text-at-specified-width. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
I've benchmarked R2 and S3 and S3 is well ahead in terms of latency especially on ListObject requests. I think R2 has come kind of concurrency limit as concurrent ListObject requests seem to to have increase failure rate when serving simultaneous requests I have a few of the S3-like wired up live over the internet you can try yourself in your browser. Backblaze is surprisingly performant which I did not... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
The top H3 cell will have ID 841ec91ffffffff; Go to https://observablehq.com/@nrabinowitz/h3-index-inspector and paste it in and you'll see that it's… Istanbul! Write another query to find out what the most common fast food places are in Istanbul… (Burger King and McDonald's, and it's not even close). Install the spatial extension and you can find all venues within 100 meters of you. Find all the Taco Bell/Pizza... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
So I've used Observable Notebooks for building interactive articles for a while now (my favorite https://observablehq.com/@mjbo/sydney-qms-panel-public-telephone-pairings). I wanted to see if I could replicate _most_ of the (reader's). - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
> and Observable is cool, but strays from standard JS. The front end does but the underlying runtime is running just javascript, and the source code is basically javascript with some trivial macros which are fully captured in the MIT licensed acorn parser. Thats why normal Javascript debugging expression work perfectly in Observablehq. https://github.com/observablehq/parser. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
Public Opinion Summary on Observable
Observable has carved a niche for itself in the realms of data visualization and interactive coding, positioning itself as a formidable tool among data scientists, developers, and visualization enthusiasts. This platform, often compared to competitors such as Jupyter, D3.js, and Microsoft Power BI, offers a powerful environment for producing interactive data displays and dashboards leveraging JavaScript. Public sentiment reflects a mixture of admiration and critique, with emphasis on its versatility, functionality, and learning curve.
Strengths and Positive Sentiment
Observable is particularly lauded for its interactive notebooks that facilitate live coding, allowing users to see immediate impacts of their code changes. This dynamic environment is conducive to rapid prototyping especially in data visualization projects. Users have cited Observable’s capability for experimenting with complex algorithms and visualizations, as illustrated in forums discussing high-end color quantization or interactive geometry visualizations. It fosters creativity and experimentation, appealing to those who wish to delve deeply into nuance and detail of visualization scripting.
The integration of JavaScript also allows a seamless experience for those familiar with the language, offering broad applicability for web-based projects. Observable is seen by many as a Grafana alternative due to its ability to create sophisticated visualizations from datasets via code, offering an exploratory and iterative approach.
Critiques and Challenges
Despite its virtues, Observable has faced criticism particularly concerning usability concerns when integrating with other tools or frameworks. Notably, developers have pointed out issues with embedding Observable's reactive cells into other environments like Vue.js, arguing that it can lead to complexities and potential runtime errors. This has positioned Observable as a resource that, while potent, necessitates a tailored understanding of its reactive paradigm.
Price sensitivity is also highlighted in recent discussions where Observable was considered but disregarded in B2B SaaS settings due to perceived misalignment with specific criteria or cost concerns, demonstrating that it may not meet the needs of all projects or organizations.
Community and Contribution
The Observable platform benefits from a robust community that continually explores the boundaries of what can be achieved within its environment. Platforms like Hacker News and technical blog spaces frequently see mention of creative use-cases, from unique data visualizations to algorithmic explorations. This community engagement not only reflects individual project development but also contributes significantly to Observable's evolving documentation and resource pool.
Observable’s core design philosophy appears to cater to those looking for customization and control, requiring users to invest in learning its unique reactive paradigm and JavaScript underpinnings to fully exploit its capabilities. This learning curve presents both a challenge and an opportunity, encouraging a deeper understanding and engagement with coding and data visualization.
In conclusion, Observable stands out as a unique tool within the data visualization landscape, appreciated for its capabilities and modularity but requiring a robust understanding and willingness to engage with its reactive model. While it may not fit every use case or budget, it remains a preferred choice for many who value its live interactive features and community-driven innovations.
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