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observablehq
Split pane like spreadsheets
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. When my notebooks get complex I find myself scrolling a lot because the bit I am working on might not be on screen (because the output is the cooperation of many cells).
Describe the solution you'd like I would like to be able to drag a horizontal split screen between cells like a I can with excel/sheets and have two independently scrollable panes
Describe alternatives you've considered I sometimes have two chrome tabs open so I can have one focussed on the output while I code in the other but end up 2nd guessing myself when to refresh the output one. I am not always sure its up to date.
Additional context The Excel feature https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-multiple-panes-sheets-or-workbooks-fcdfb33e-5168-470d-a3d6-7ef1663599f3
Tom, about the 2-tab/2-window workaround... that second window should auto-update... do you see times when it doesn't? Would love to make sure we squash any bugs related to that...
I can change a dependancy (d0), refresh notebook 1 (n1) and observable the updated dependancy in (n1), but this will not be reflected in notebook 2 until that is refreshed too (confirmed in ui=next).
As I often work on multiple notebooks at the same time (a library notebook + application notebook) and working on the application notebooks usually finds bugs in the library notebook, it is pretty common for me to straddle notebooks like this.
FWIW I see that mootari and a few others also want independently positioned views too https://twitter.com/mootari/status/1419417518452641794 though how we all envision a solution is not agreed. I drew inspiration from spreadsheet tech.
I would like to be able to drag a horizontal split screen between cells like a I can with excel/sheets and have two independently scrollable panes
@tomlarkworthy The sandbox is a single iframe, displayed at full height, in which the cell outputs have spaces in between to accommodate the editors that are layered on top (within the parent frame). Implementing a horizontal split sounds quite challenging, especially since notebooks (technically) have full control over the sandbox CSS.
Can you think of alternative solutions that would still solve your problem?
I did look for a previous reports I promise! I didn't find #52 as we use different terminology.
Yeah the core problem is that I want to look at one cell and code in different cell, at the same time, without scrolling.
I could imagine pinning a single cell too, and using negative spacing to try and keep it on screen? ... come to think of it I could implement that now