jupyter-cell-enhancements-retro

⚠️ This is a purpose-built, personal backport. You almost certainly want the main package instead.

This repository exists for one specific reason: running the cell-enhancements feature set inside a legacy classic Jupyter Notebook 6.x environment (specifically a notebook 6.5.x + RISE 5.7 presentation setup, the "rise6" conda environment). Classic Notebook 6 cannot load JupyterLab extensions, so this is a from-scratch nbextension port maintained on a best-effort basis for that environment only.

If you are using JupyterLab 4 (or modern Jupyter in general), do not install this. Use the real extension from PyPI instead:

pip install jupyterlab-cell-enhancements

(source: Columbia-Data-Labs/jupyterlab-cell-enhancements)

What it does

A classic-notebook (nbextension) port of the JupyterLab cell-enhancements extension:

• Cell titles — an editable title above each cell, stored in cell metadata.
• Focus mode — expand one cell to fill the notebook area; Esc exits.
• Floating notes & comments — draggable, resizable markdown note cards with author avatars, replies, resolve/reopen, and comments anchored to a text selection in a cell's source, rendered markdown, or output.
• Side-by-side input/output — per cell or notebook-wide, with a draggable divider.
• Cell appearance — rounded inputs, cell background / active-bar / prompt colours.

Notebooks round-trip with the JupyterLab version: both read and write the same cell metadata keys (cell_title, cell_comments, cell_split, cell_split_ratio), so a notebook annotated in Lab shows its titles, notes and layout here, and vice versa.

Because classic Notebook has no Settings Registry, user preferences (author name and colour, show-resolved, notebook-wide appearance) are stored in the browser's localStorage rather than in Jupyter settings.

Install

conda activate rise6
pip install jupyter-cell-enhancements-retro

Then restart jupyter notebook. The nbextension registers and enables itself at install time (via share/jupyter/nbextensions + etc/jupyter/nbconfig); there is no separate jupyter nbextension install/enable step.

To uninstall:

pip uninstall jupyter-cell-enhancements-retro

Requirements

• notebook >= 6, < 7 (classic Notebook; Notebook 7 is Lab-based and is served by the main package instead)
• A reasonably modern browser (Chrome/Edge current versions)

Usage notes

• A Cells+ menu is added to the notebook menu bar with every command: focus mode, side-by-side toggles, note author/colour, show-resolved, show-titles, and the appearance options.
• Toolbar buttons: focus mode, side-by-side for the selected cell, and "comment on selection".
• Hover a cell to see the faint add title and note marker affordances, matching the Lab version's behaviour.
• During a RISE slideshow the note overlay is hidden so it can't float over slides.

License

BSD-3-Clause, same as the parent project.