Clarification on classic nbgrader toolbar vs JupyterLab sidebar, and supported downgrade paths

[sebastianriemer]

Hello nbgrader maintainers 👋,

I’m trying to understand the current and future status of nbgrader’s UI, especially in the context of JupyterHub and modern Jupyter stacks, and I’d appreciate some clarification.

Historically, nbgrader provided a classic Notebook inline cell toolbar (cell-type dropdowns for autograder tests, manual grading, read-only, grade IDs, etc.). In current releases, I only see the JupyterLab sidebar UI (Create Assignment, Validate, Formgrader, etc.), and no equivalent inline per-cell UI.

I have three questions:

1. Is the classic inline nbgrader toolbar officially deprecated or removed?
If so, which nbgrader version was the last one that still supported it, and is its absence in current versions intentional?

2. Is there any plan to bring back full per-cell grading UI in JupyterLab or Notebook 7?
In other words, is the Lab sidebar intended to be the complete replacement for the old toolbar, or is richer cell-level UI still on the roadmap?

3. Is there a supported “legacy” stack for people who still need the classic toolbar?
If so, could you provide a known-good combination of:

• nbgrader version
• notebook / jupyter_server version
• JupyterHub version (if applicable)
  that is expected to work together today?

I’ve been experimenting with various combinations (Notebook 6.x, nbgrader 0.6–0.8, JupyterHub 2–4), and it’s not clear which incompatibilities are accidental vs. intentional.

Thanks very much for any guidance — this would help a lot of instructors who still rely on the classic nbgrader grading workflow.

[sebastianriemer]

I want to add, that I myself did never work with the inline-toolbar; Maybe I am mistaken, and the sidebar actually covers all functionality which was present with that older inline-toolbar?
That of course would render the need to revert to a previous version meaninless.
So I guess my followup question would be: Is nbgrader providing the same functionality in the newest jupyterhub/jupyter version or are features missing?

[perllaghu]

1. Is the classic inline nbgrader toolbar officially deprecated or removed? If so, which nbgrader version was the last one that still supported it, and is its absence in current versions intentional?

It's not a case that the "classic inline nbgrader toolbar officially deprecated" - it's that notebook 7 doesn't have that concept
[well, it obviously does, as there are several icons that appear when you hover over a cell.... however the interact with cell metadata has been moved to a different location in jupyterlab]

2. Is there any plan to bring back full per-cell grading UI in JupyterLab or Notebook 7? In other words, is the Lab sidebar intended to be the complete replacement for the old toolbar, or is richer cell-level UI still on the roadmap?

As above, this is driven by Jupyter themselves, rather than this plugin

3. Is there a supported “legacy” stack for people who still need the classic toolbar?

There isn't.... and it's kinda complicated: you'd need to use jupyter-not-lab, and then nbgrader < 0.9 .... else you get tangled in the various changed that jupyterlab created

[sebastianriemer]

Final question - does the sidebar cover all functionality of the former inline toolbar?