Frontend#

• Darkened the user colors to make them more readable
• Display a connecting modal when reconnecting to the socket client
• Show a popover list of users when more than 3 users are active to conserve editor header space
• Added user avatars and names to the kernel selector to make it more obvious who users are
• Simplified the UI by reducing clutter in the left sidebar and moving the kernel and profile to the header

Frontend#

• Rewrote the editor header to improve performance
• Improved the UI for the kernel selector to make it more intuitive and obvious to the user when they are viewing another user's outputs
• Replaced Ace with Monaco as the underlying code editor used for cells
• Added code completions powered by the Jupyter Kernel
• Send running status to collaborators so that you can see when a cell is running as a viewer
• Released a new version of desktop-launcher that allows the token to be generated on demand and persists across sessions
• Remember the kernel token on the frontend to easily reconnect to the kernel across sessions
• Added status indicators and separated active and inactive users in the kernel selector
• Added a view source / render markdown option to the cell action menu for markdown cells
• Added a run cell option to the cell action menu for python cells
• Auto reconnect to the editor socket client when connection times-out

Frontend#

• Redesigned the kernel panel to be more intuitive and performant
• Fixed bug where the editor would continuously poll the kernel even if auto connect was disabled
• Added a dropdown menu to each cell for advanced actions
• Remember the user's auto connect settings across sessions

Frontend#

• Display error message notifications
• Show the collaborator's name on their cursor when they are typing
• Auto render markdown on unlock
• Move code execution queue to the ReduxKernel middleware instead of the useKernel hook
• Deterministically choose a color for each user for their cursor, cell borders, and avatar borders
• Use the jupyter notebook server instead of jupyter kernelgateway in the desktop-launcher
• Use the @jupyterlab/services package instead of the deprecated jupyter-js-services package

• Released v0.2.0 of @actually-colab/desktop-launcher with automatic cryptographically secure random tokens and the jupyter notebook server under the hood

Organizational#

• Got accepted to ACM and our funding request was approved to provide access to the platform until December 2021

Frontend#

• Remember recently used gateway URIs so that the user can select them automatically from a dropdown
• Used conditional overflow-anchors to prevent scrolling from DOM updates when multiple users are typing (before, your cell could move down if someone was typing in a cell above you)
• Major performance improvements as large as 10x faster UI updates from typing, locking, and unlocking
• Much faster chat experience especially when there is a large number of messages

Organizational#

• Got accepted to the Open Source Collective
• Got accepted to GitHub Sponsors

Frontend#

• Refresh notebooks and workshops when a workshop is released
• Automatically open a created notebook or workshop
• Auto scroll to the selected cell
• Added Sentry for error monitoring in production

Website#

• Built a completely new website
• Added a waitlist form to the website

Organizational#

• Got accepted to Sentry's Open Source Sponsored plan
• Got accepted to Netlify's Open Source Sponsored plan

HackIllinois 2021#

We are super excited to announce that we won 1st place at HackIllinois 2021! You can read our Devpost for our full write-up!

Frontend#

• Built the collaborators panel so users can now share their notebooks and view who has access
• Profile images are now supported for user avatars
• Stopped hardcoding lock owners, replaced with actual live data
• Render profile pictures from Google accounts
• Allow users to view outputs live from other users on the notebook
• Prevent users from editing or sharing a notebook when they have read only access
• Render cursor positions of active users
• Send cell contents on unlock to fix race condition
• Track connection status to the client to prevent sending socket messages until client is ready
• Sort notebooks by name or last modified
• Filter notebooks using search field
• Built workshops that have instructors and attendees
• Rebuilt redux store to use immutable maps instead of lists
• Use row/column to identify cursor position instead of converting to index
• Added support for deleting cells from a notebook
• Users can upload existing ipynb files to create notebooks or workshops
• Implemented a chat feature to allow users to message each other
• View workshop attendee notebooks under the instructor notebook

Frontend#

• Logs are now displayed in an easier to read timeline format
• Replaced the auto connect button with a toggle to be more intuitive
• Users can now download their projects as .ipynb, .py, and .md

Backend#

• Redeployed on custom domains
• Initialized new database instances for AWS free tier

Docs Site#

• Autogen documentation for editor client
• Cleaned up docs repo