Exploring Quarto Dashboard for Impactful and Visual Communication

Watch the video

Introduction

Christophe Dervieux introduces us to Quarto Dashboard, a powerful open-source scientific and technical publishing system. Designed to create impactful visual communication directly from Jupyter Notebooks, Quarto enables the seamless creation of interactive charts, dashboards, and dynamic narratives.

Building Visual Communication with Quarto

Quarto extends standard markdown with advanced features tailored for scientific writing. It offers support for multiple computation engines, allowing narratives and executable code to merge into various outputs: PDF, HTML pages, websites, books, and especially dashboards. The dashboard format enhances data communication by organizing visual metrics in an efficient and impactful layout.

Using Quarto, rendering a Jupyter notebook becomes simple: with just a command-line instruction (quarto render), users can output polished, shareable dashboards. Additional extensions, such as those available in VS Code, JupyterLab, and Positron IDEs, streamline this experience further.

Dashboard Features and Design

Dashboards in Quarto organize content using components like cards, rows, columns, sidebars, and tabs. Each element structures visual outputs like plots, tables, and value boxes, allowing maximum clarity. Customization is straightforward, leveraging YAML configuration and Bootstrap-based theming. Users can create multi-page navigation, interactivity through JavaScript libraries, and adapt layouts for specific audiences.

Recent updates even enable branding dashboards easily with SCSS themes, making Quarto ideal for both scientific and corporate environments.

Conclusion

Quarto revolutionizes technical communication by enabling scientists and analysts to produce professional-grade dashboards and publications effortlessly. Christophe’s session at PyData Paris 2023 showcased the simplicity, power, and flexibility Quarto brings to modern data storytelling.