Layout and Styling of Jupyter widgets¶

This notebook presents how to layout and style Jupyter interactive widgets to build rich and reactive widget-based applications.

The layout attribute.¶

Jupyter interactive widgets have a layout attribute exposing a number of CSS properties that impact how widgets are laid out.

Exposed CSS properties¶

Sizes¶

• height
• width
• max_height
• max_width
• min_height
• min_width

Display¶

• visibility
• display
• overflow
• overflow_x (deprecated in 7.5, use overflow instead)
• overflow_y (deprecated in 7.5, use overflow instead)

Box model¶

• border
• margin
• padding

Positioning¶

• top
• left
• bottom
• right

Flexbox¶

• order
• flex_flow
• align_items
• flex
• align_self
• align_content
• justify_content

Grid layout¶

• grid_auto_columns

• grid_auto_flow

• grid_auto_rows

• grid_gap

• grid_template

• grid_row

• grid_column

Shorthand CSS properties¶

You may have noticed that certain CSS properties such as margin-[top/right/bottom/left] seem to be missing. The same holds for padding-[top/right/bottom/left] etc.

In fact, you can atomically specify [top/right/bottom/left] margins via the margin attribute alone by passing the string '100px 150px 100px 80px' for a respectively top, right, bottom and left margins of 100, 150, 100 and 80 pixels.

Similarly, the flex attribute can hold values for flex-grow, flex-shrink and flex-basis. The border attribute is a shorthand property for border-width, border-style (required), and border-color.

Simple examples¶

The following example shows how to resize a Button so that its views have a height of 80px and a width of 50% of the available space. It also includes an example of setting a CSS property that requires multiple values (a border, in thise case):

The layout property can be shared between multiple widgets and assigned directly.

Description¶

You may have noticed that long descriptions are truncated. This is because the description length is, by default, fixed.

If you need more flexibility to lay out widgets and descriptions, you can use Label widgets directly.

You can change the length of the description to fit the description text. However, this will make the widget itself shorter. You can change both by adjusting the description width and the widget width using the widget's style.

Natural sizes, and arrangements using HBox and VBox¶

Most of the core-widgets have default heights and widths that tile well together. This allows simple layouts based on the HBox and VBox helper functions to align naturally:

LaTeX¶

Widgets such as sliders and text inputs have a description attribute that can render Latex Equations. The Label widget also renders Latex equations.

Number formatting¶

Sliders have a readout field which can be formatted using Python's Format Specification Mini-Language. If the space available for the readout is too narrow for the string representation of the slider value, a different styling is applied to show that not all digits are visible.

The Flexbox layout¶

The HBox and VBox classes above are special cases of the Box widget.

The Box widget enables the entire CSS flexbox spec as well as the Grid layout spec, enabling rich reactive layouts in the Jupyter notebook. It aims at providing an efficient way to lay out, align and distribute space among items in a container.

Again, the whole flexbox spec is exposed via the layout attribute of the container widget (Box) and the contained items. One may share the same layout attribute among all the contained items.

Acknowledgement¶

The following flexbox tutorial on the flexbox layout follows the lines of the article A Complete Guide to Flexbox by Chris Coyier, and uses text and various images from the article with permission.

Basics and terminology¶

Since flexbox is a whole module and not a single property, it involves a lot of things including its whole set of properties. Some of them are meant to be set on the container (parent element, known as "flex container") whereas the others are meant to be set on the children (known as "flex items"). If regular layout is based on both block and inline flow directions, the flex layout is based on "flex-flow directions". Please have a look at this figure from the specification, explaining the main idea behind the flex layout.

Basically, items will be laid out following either the main axis (from main-start to main-end) or the cross axis (from cross-start to cross-end).

• main axis - The main axis of a flex container is the primary axis along which flex items are laid out. Beware, it is not necessarily horizontal; it depends on the flex-direction property (see below).
• main-start | main-end - The flex items are placed within the container starting from main-start and going to main-end.
• main size - A flex item's width or height, whichever is in the main dimension, is the item's main size. The flex item's main size property is either the ‘width’ or ‘height’ property, whichever is in the main dimension.

cross axis - The axis perpendicular to the main axis is called the cross axis. Its direction depends on the main axis direction.

• cross-start | cross-end - Flex lines are filled with items and placed into the container starting on the cross-start side of the flex container and going toward the cross-end side.
• cross size - The width or height of a flex item, whichever is in the cross dimension, is the item's cross size. The cross size property is whichever of ‘width’ or ‘height’ that is in the cross dimension.

Properties of the parent¶

display¶

display can be flex or inline-flex. This defines a flex container (block or inline).

flex-flow¶

flex-flow is a shorthand for the flex-direction and flex-wrap properties, which together define the flex container's main and cross axes. Default is row nowrap.

• flex-direction (column-reverse | column | row | row-reverse )

  This establishes the main-axis, thus defining the direction flex items are placed in the flex container. Flexbox is (aside from optional wrapping) a single-direction layout concept. Think of flex items as primarily laying out either in horizontal rows or vertical columns.

• flex-wrap (nowrap | wrap | wrap-reverse)

  By default, flex items will all try to fit onto one line. You can change that and allow the items to wrap as needed with this property. Direction also plays a role here, determining the direction new lines are stacked in.

justify-content¶

justify-content can be one of flex-start, flex-end, center, space-between, space-around. This defines the alignment along the main axis. It helps distribute extra free space left over when either all the flex items on a line are inflexible, or are flexible but have reached their maximum size. It also exerts some control over the alignment of items when they overflow the line.

align-items¶

align-items can be one of flex-start, flex-end, center, baseline, stretch. This defines the default behaviour for how flex items are laid out along the cross axis on the current line. Think of it as the justify-content version for the cross-axis (perpendicular to the main-axis).

align-content¶

align-content can be one of flex-start, flex-end, center, baseline, stretch. This aligns a flex container's lines within when there is extra space in the cross-axis, similar to how justify-content aligns individual items within the main-axis.

Note: this property has no effect when there is only one line of flex items.

Properties of the items¶

The flexbox-related CSS properties of the items have no impact if the parent element is not a flexbox container (i.e. has a display attribute equal to flex or inline-flex).

order¶

By default, flex items are laid out in the source order. However, the order property controls the order in which they appear in the flex container.

flex¶

flex is shorthand for three properties, flex-grow, flex-shrink and flex-basis combined. The second and third parameters (flex-shrink and flex-basis) are optional. Default is 0 1 auto.

• flex-grow

  This defines the ability for a flex item to grow if necessary. It accepts a unitless value that serves as a proportion. It dictates what amount of the available space inside the flex container the item should take up.

  If all items have flex-grow set to 1, the remaining space in the container will be distributed equally to all children. If one of the children a value of 2, the remaining space would take up twice as much space as the others (or it will try to, at least).

• flex-shrink

  This defines the ability for a flex item to shrink if necessary.

• flex-basis

  This defines the default size of an element before the remaining space is distributed. It can be a length (e.g. 20%, 5rem, etc.) or a keyword. The auto keyword means "look at my width or height property".

align-self¶

align-self allows the default alignment (or the one specified by align-items) to be overridden for individual flex items.

The VBox and HBox helpers¶

The VBox and HBox helper classes provide simple defaults to arrange child widgets in vertical and horizontal boxes. They are roughly equivalent to:

def VBox(*pargs, **kwargs):
    """Displays multiple widgets vertically using the flexible box model."""
    box = Box(*pargs, **kwargs)
    box.layout.display = 'flex'
    box.layout.flex_flow = 'column'
    box.layout.align_items = 'stretch'
    return box

def HBox(*pargs, **kwargs):
    """Displays multiple widgets horizontally using the flexible box model."""
    box = Box(*pargs, **kwargs)
    box.layout.display = 'flex'
    box.layout.align_items = 'stretch'
    return box

Examples¶

Four buttons in a VBox. Items stretch to the maximum width, in a vertical box taking 50% of the available space.

Three buttons in an HBox. Items flex proportionally to their weight.

A more advanced example: a reactive form.

The form is a VBox of width '50%'. Each row in the VBox is an HBox, that justifies the content with space between..

A more advanced example: a carousel.

Compatibility note¶

The overflow_x and overflow_y options are deprecated in ipywidgets 7.5. Instead, use the shorthand property overflow='scroll hidden'. The first part specificies overflow in x, the second the overflow in y.

A widget for exploring layout options¶

The widgets below was written by ipywidgets user Doug Redden (@DougRzz). If you want to look through the source code to see how it works, take a look at this notebook he contributed.

Use the dropdowns and sliders in the widget to change the layout of the box containing the five colored buttons. Many of the CSS layout optoins described above are available, and the Python code to generate a Layout object reflecting the settings is in a TextArea in the widget.

Predefined styles¶

If you wish the styling of widgets to make use of colors and styles defined by the environment (to be consistent with e.g. a notebook theme), some widgets enable choosing in a list of pre-defined styles.

For example, the Button widget has a button_style attribute that may take 5 different values:

• 'primary'
• 'success'
• 'info'
• 'warning'
• 'danger'

besides the default empty string ''.

The style attribute¶

While the layout attribute only exposes layout-related CSS properties for the top-level DOM element of widgets, the
style attribute is used to expose non-layout related styling attributes of widgets.

However, the properties of the style attribute are specific to each widget type.

You can get a list of the style attributes for a widget with the keys property.

Just like the layout attribute, widget styles can be assigned to other widgets.

Widget styling attributes are specific to each widget type.

There is a list of all style keys.

The Grid layout¶

The GridBox class is a special case of the Box widget.

The Box widget enables the entire CSS flexbox spec, enabling rich reactive layouts in the Jupyter notebook. It aims at providing an efficient way to lay out, align and distribute space among items in a container.

Again, the whole grid layout spec is exposed via the layout attribute of the container widget (Box) and the contained items. One may share the same layout attribute among all the contained items.

The following flexbox tutorial on the flexbox layout follows the lines of the article A Complete Guide to Grid by Chris House, and uses text and various images from the article with permission.

Basics and browser support¶

To get started you have to define a container element as a grid with display: grid, set the column and row sizes with grid-template-rows, grid-template-columns, and grid_template_areas, and then place its child elements into the grid with grid-column and grid-row. Similarly to flexbox, the source order of the grid items doesn't matter. Your CSS can place them in any order, which makes it super easy to rearrange your grid with media queries. Imagine defining the layout of your entire page, and then completely rearranging it to accommodate a different screen width all with only a couple lines of CSS. Grid is one of the most powerful CSS modules ever introduced.

As of March 2017, most browsers shipped native, unprefixed support for CSS Grid: Chrome (including on Android), Firefox, Safari (including on iOS), and Opera. Internet Explorer 10 and 11 on the other hand support it, but it's an old implementation with an outdated syntax. The time to build with grid is now!

Important terminology¶

Before diving into the concepts of Grid it's important to understand the terminology. Since the terms involved here are all kinda conceptually similar, it's easy to confuse them with one another if you don't first memorize their meanings defined by the Grid specification. But don't worry, there aren't many of them.

Grid Container

The element on which display: grid is applied. It's the direct parent of all the grid items. In this example container is the grid container.

<div class="container">
  <div class="item item-1"></div>
  <div class="item item-2"></div>
  <div class="item item-3"></div>
</div>

Grid Item

The children (e.g. direct descendants) of the grid container. Here the item elements are grid items, but sub-item isn't.

<div class="container">
  <div class="item"></div> 
  <div class="item">
    <p class="sub-item"></p>
  </div>
  <div class="item"></div>
</div>

Grid Line

The dividing lines that make up the structure of the grid. They can be either vertical ("column grid lines") or horizontal ("row grid lines") and reside on either side of a row or column. Here the yellow line is an example of a column grid line.

Grid Track

The space between two adjacent grid lines. You can think of them like the columns or rows of the grid. Here's the grid track between the second and third row grid lines.

Grid Cell

The space between two adjacent row and two adjacent column grid lines. It's a single "unit" of the grid. Here's the grid cell between row grid lines 1 and 2, and column grid lines 2 and 3.

Grid Area

The total space surrounded by four grid lines. A grid area may be comprised of any number of grid cells. Here's the grid area between row grid lines 1 and 3, and column grid lines 1 and 3.

Properties of the parent¶

grid-template-rows, grid-template-colums

Defines the columns and rows of the grid with a space-separated list of values. The values represent the track size, and the space between them represents the grid line.

Values:

• <track-size> - can be a length, a percentage, or a fraction of the free space in the grid (using the fr unit)
• <line-name> - an arbitrary name of your choosing

grid-template-areas

Defines a grid template by referencing the names of the grid areas which are specified with the grid-area property. Repeating the name of a grid area causes the content to span those cells. A period signifies an empty cell. The syntax itself provides a visualization of the structure of the grid.

Values:

• <grid-area-name> - the name of a grid area specified with grid-area
• . - a period signifies an empty grid cell
• none - no grid areas are defined

grid-gap

A shorthand for grid-row-gap and grid-column-gap

Values:

• <grid-row-gap>, <grid-column-gap> - length values

where grid-row-gap and grid-column-gap specify the sizes of the grid lines. You can think of it like setting the width of the gutters between the columns / rows.

• <line-size> - a length value

Note: The grid- prefix will be removed and grid-gap renamed to gap. The unprefixed property is already supported in Chrome 68+, Safari 11.2 Release 50+ and Opera 54+.

align-items

Aligns grid items along the block (column) axis (as opposed to justify-items which aligns along the inline (row) axis). This value applies to all grid items inside the container.

Values:

• start - aligns items to be flush with the start edge of their cell
• end - aligns items to be flush with the end edge of their cell
• center - aligns items in the center of their cell
• stretch - fills the whole height of the cell (this is the default)

justify-items

Aligns grid items along the inline (row) axis (as opposed to align-items which aligns along the block (column) axis). This value applies to all grid items inside the container.

Values:

• start - aligns items to be flush with the start edge of their cell
• end - aligns items to be flush with the end edge of their cell
• center - aligns items in the center of their cell
• stretch - fills the whole width of the cell (this is the default)

align-content

Sometimes the total size of your grid might be less than the size of its grid container. This could happen if all of your grid items are sized with non-flexible units like px. In this case you can set the alignment of the grid within the grid container. This property aligns the grid along the block (column) axis (as opposed to justify-content which aligns the grid along the inline (row) axis).

Values:

• start - aligns the grid to be flush with the start edge of the grid container
• end - aligns the grid to be flush with the end edge of the grid container
• center - aligns the grid in the center of the grid container
• stretch - resizes the grid items to allow the grid to fill the full height of the grid container
• space-around - places an even amount of space between each grid item, with half-sized spaces on the far ends
• space-between - places an even amount of space between each grid item, with no space at the far ends
• space-evenly - places an even amount of space between each grid item, including the far ends

justify-content

Sometimes the total size of your grid might be less than the size of its grid container. This could happen if all of your grid items are sized with non-flexible units like px. In this case you can set the alignment of the grid within the grid container. This property aligns the grid along the inline (row) axis (as opposed to align-content which aligns the grid along the block (column) axis).

Values:

• start - aligns the grid to be flush with the start edge of the grid container
• end - aligns the grid to be flush with the end edge of the grid container
• center - aligns the grid in the center of the grid container
• stretch - resizes the grid items to allow the grid to fill the full width of the grid container
• space-around - places an even amount of space between each grid item, with half-sized spaces on the far ends
• space-between - places an even amount of space between each grid item, with no space at the far ends
• space-evenly - places an even amount of space between each grid item, including the far ends

grid-auto-columns, grid-auto-rows

Specifies the size of any auto-generated grid tracks (aka implicit grid tracks). Implicit tracks get created when there are more grid items than cells in the grid or when a grid item is placed outside of the explicit grid. (see The Difference Between Explicit and Implicit Grids)

Values:

• <track-size> - can be a length, a percentage, or a fraction of the free space in the grid (using the fr unit)

Properties of the items¶

Note: float, display: inline-block, display: table-cell, vertical-align and column-?? properties have no effect on a grid item.

grid-column, grid-row

Determines a grid item's location within the grid by referring to specific grid lines. grid-column-start/grid-row-start is the line where the item begins, and grid-column-end/grid-row-end is the line where the item ends.

Values:

• <line> - can be a number to refer to a numbered grid line, or a name to refer to a named grid line
• span <number> - the item will span across the provided number of grid tracks
• span <name> - the item will span across until it hits the next line with the provided name
• auto - indicates auto-placement, an automatic span, or a default span of one

.item {
  grid-column: <number> | <name> | span <number> | span <name> | auto / 
               <number> | <name> | span <number> | span <name> | auto
  grid-row: <number> | <name> | span <number> | span <name> | auto /
            <number> | <name> | span <number> | span <name> | auto
}

Examples:

.item-a {
  grid-column: 2 / five;
  grid-row: row1-start / 3;
}

.item-b {
  grid-column: 1 / span col4-start;
  grid-row: 2 / span 2;
}

If no grid-column / grid-row is declared, the item will span 1 track by default.

Items can overlap each other. You can use z-index to control their stacking order.

grid-area

Gives an item a name so that it can be referenced by a template created with the grid-template-areas property. Alternatively, this property can be used as an even shorter shorthand for grid-row-start + grid-column-start + grid-row-end + grid-column-end.

Values:

• <name> - a name of your choosing
• <row-start> / <column-start> / <row-end> / <column-end> - can be numbers or named lines

.item {
  grid-area: <name> | <row-start> / <column-start> / <row-end> / <column-end>;
}

Examples:

As a way to assign a name to the item:

.item-d {
  grid-area: header
}

As the short-shorthand for grid-row-start + grid-column-start + grid-row-end + grid-column-end:

.item-d {
  grid-area: 1 / col4-start / last-line / 6
}

justify-self

Aligns a grid item inside a cell along the inline (row) axis (as opposed to align-self which aligns along the block (column) axis). This value applies to a grid item inside a single cell.

Values:

• start - aligns the grid item to be flush with the start edge of the cell
• end - aligns the grid item to be flush with the end edge of the cell
• center - aligns the grid item in the center of the cell
• stretch - fills the whole width of the cell (this is the default)

.item {
  justify-self: start | end | center | stretch;
}

Examples:

.item-a {
  justify-self: start;
}

.item-a {
  justify-self: end;
}

.item-a {
  justify-self: center;
}

.item-a {
  justify-self: stretch;
}

To set alignment for all the items in a grid, this behavior can also be set on the grid container via the justify-items property.

Placing items by name:

Setting up row and column template and gap