# What features do you want to see on Julia Observer?
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042
**Category:** Community
**Created:** [April 4, 2017, 7:18am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042 "2017-04-04T07:18:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 19
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@djsegal](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/djsegal)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2017, 7:18am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/1 "2017-04-04T07:18:45Z")
It’s been a couple months since I first released [juliaobserver.com](http://juliaobserver.com).
Since then, I’ve been gradually fixing bugs and expanding features.
As of late, though, development (and traffic) have started to decline.
* * *
Therefore, I’d like to ask the community:
- What do you want to see on Julia Observer?
- What works? What doesn’t? What’s only so-so?
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### Author:  [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2017, 7:39am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/2 "2017-04-04T07:39:02Z")
I think that declining traffic is to be expected — the ranking is interesting, but not something I would want to recheck frequently. Don’t measure the usefulness of something by traffic; you can create a valuable resource without people revisiting it on a daily basis.
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### Author:  [@merl-dev](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/merl-dev)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2017, 9:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/3 "2017-04-04T09:24:37Z")
First time on the site, wasn’t too clear what metric used for each tab. Perhaps these could be configurabe, described more clearly.
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### Author:  [@John\_Gibson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/John_Gibson)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2017, 10:54am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/4 "2017-04-04T10:54:55Z")
What’s the functionality and purpose of Julia Observer?
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### Author:  [@ChrisRackauckas](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ChrisRackauckas)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2017, 10:57am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/5 "2017-04-04T10:57:21Z")
And on this note: it serves its purpose. If it was any more complicated, it wouldn’t. This resource is really good, but by its nature I’m not going to check it often. It’s a great resource! But I don’t know if there’s much else to do there. I would love to see the next problem you solve!
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### Author:  [@John\_Gibson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/John_Gibson)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2017, 3:33pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/6 "2017-04-04T15:33:35Z")
I think Julia Observer would benefit by some documentation, including a description of its purpose and functionality, either in a brief blurb at the top of [https://juliaobserver.com](https://juliaobserver.com) or under About and Help buttons.
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### Author:  [@djsegal](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/djsegal)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2017, 5:26am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/7 "2017-04-05T05:26:15Z")
as @John_Gibson mentioned, I’ll definitely add an about/help page.
- but could you elaborate on how to make sorting configurable?
- and if `hot` didn’t exist, would it still be unintuitive?
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### Author:  [@tim.holy](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tim.holy)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2017, 9:43am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/8 "2017-04-05T09:43:52Z")
The main thing I want is package search, but Julia Observer seems to miss a lot of relevant packages. (Search is a hard problem.) For example, if I type interpolation into the search bar, it misses packages that show up on the first page of a general google search. (Dierckx, ApproxFun, etc.)
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### Author:  [@oxinabox](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/oxinabox)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2017, 6:50am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/9 "2017-04-07T06:50:01Z")
I would like to see the context of the package, shown in a graph, with its ancestors (things it depends on), and it’s decendants (things) that depend on it, shown.
(Probably with links).
Example shown below: (Enjoy the aweful inkscape skillz)
Potentially links could be shown between other nodes in the graph (which I think would be interesting).
(This would be the induced\_graph between the set of ancestors unioned with the set of decedents)
I think if proper graph layour was used this would look a lot better.
The point of this view is to have a good idea of what would break if a package broke, and what breaking would break this package etc, and to generally see where the package lays in the ecosystem
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### Author:  [@merl-dev](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/merl-dev)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2017, 1:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/10 "2017-04-07T13:09:04Z")
Sweet! Add perhaps a version since these are commonly restricted in REQUIRE.
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### Author:  [@jmarcellopereira](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jmarcellopereira)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2017, 5:56am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/12 "2017-04-10T05:56:25Z")
A warning: maxima-ecl, (manjaro, arch linux) does not work.
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### Author:  [@merl-dev](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/merl-dev)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2017, 8:04am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/13 "2017-04-10T08:04:09Z")
Nice changes! Like the Categories.
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### Author:  [@paulhendricks](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/paulhendricks)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2017, 2:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/14 "2017-04-10T14:13:21Z")
I see from the About page you’re drawing inspiration from other package browsing tools. One that I use often and think is well designed is [https://www.rdocumentation.org/](https://www.rdocumentation.org/) by DataCamp. Perhaps there are some features that that you might find interesting.
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### Author:  [@djsegal](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/djsegal)
#### Post date: [April 11, 2017, 4:27am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/15 "2017-04-11T04:27:42Z")
Where does `maxima-ecl` live?
For julia observer to catch it, there would have to be a github repo named:
- `maxima-ecl.jl`
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### Author:  [@djsegal](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/djsegal)
#### Post date: [April 11, 2017, 6:56am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/16 "2017-04-11T06:56:23Z")
Just a heads up, all proposed changes are now live.
Let me know what you think and possibly throw out some new ideas
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### Author:  [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)
#### Post date: [April 11, 2017, 8:08am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/17 "2017-04-11T08:08:54Z")
As a note, when swapping between the categories and news tab it takes about 3 seconds per swap for me. Makes it feel pretty sluggish.
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### Author:  [@djsegal](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/djsegal)
#### Post date: [April 11, 2017, 6:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/18 "2017-04-11T18:19:12Z")
This stems from the fact that the app’s built on rails (and not using a javascript framework).
// i.e. switching between `categories` & `news` initiates a server route change
* * *
A few questions:
- Was the initial load slow?
- Were subsequent loads slow?
Also, was it slower going:
- from `categories` to `news`
- **or** from `news` to `categories`?
// edit: one solution would be to do some caching on the actual pages (would speed up search too)
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### Author:  [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2017, 6:45am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/19 "2017-04-12T06:45:14Z")
Initial load is quite fast. Going from categories → news or news → categories takes the same amount of time.
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### Author:  [@mkborregaard](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mkborregaard)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2017, 6:52am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-features-do-you-want-to-see-on-julia-observer/3042/20 "2017-04-12T06:52:45Z")
I wrote a Plots recipe for this at some point
[https://gist.github.com/mkborregaard/6a97365594bc333cb01da1d95ad36543](https://gist.github.com/mkborregaard/6a97365594bc333cb01da1d95ad36543)
There is an example of it in use here: [Scope in metaprogramming - #17 by mkborregaard](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/scope-in-metaprogramming/2378/17)