WGLMakie

WGLMakie is the web-based backend, which is mostly implemented in Julia right now. WGLMakie uses Bonito to generate the HTML and JavaScript for displaying the plots. On the JavaScript side, we use ThreeJS and WebGL to render the plots. Moving more of the implementation to JavaScript is currently the goal and will give us a better JavaScript API, and more interaction without a running Julia server.

Warning

The WGLMakie documentation examples are not being built correctly as part of the move from Documenter to VitePress. For working examples of WGLMakie integration, see the Bonito plotting documentation for Documenter integration, or BonitoBook examples where Bonito is used to generate a static site.

Notebook & IDE Environments

Tip

For the best WGLMakie notebook experience with full support for interactivity and static export, consider using BonitoBook which is built on Bonito and provides seamless integration.

IJulia

• Bonito now uses the IJulia connection, and therefore can be used even with complex proxy setups without any additional configuration.

• Reloading the page isn't supported. If you reload, you need to re-execute all cells and make sure that Page() is executed first.

JupyterHub / JupyterLab / Binder

• WGLMakie should mostly work with a WebSocket connection. Bonito tries to infer the proxy setup needed to connect to the Julia process. On local JupyterLab instances, this should work without problem. On hosted instances one will likely need to have jupyter-server-proxy installed, and then execute something like Page(; listen_port=9091, proxy_url="<jhub-instance>.com/user/<username>/proxy/9091"). Also see:

  • issue #2464

  • issue #2405

Pluto

• Still uses Bonito's WebSocket connection, so needs extra setup for remote servers.

• Reloading the page isn't supported. If you reload, you need to re-execute all cells and make sure that Page() is executed first.

• Static HTML export is not fully working yet. For static export, consider using BonitoBook.

JuliaHub

• VS Code in the browser should work out of the box.

• Pluto in JuliaHub still has a problem with the WebSocket connection. You will see a plot, but interaction doesn't work.

Remote Access

Locally, WGLMakie should just work out of the box for Pluto/IJulia. However, if you're accessing the notebook from another PC, you must configure the server:

begin
    using Bonito
    some_forwarded_port = 8080
    Page(listen_url="0.0.0.0", listen_port=some_forwarded_port)
end
````

You can also specify a proxy URL if you have a more complex proxy setup.
For more advanced setups, consult the `?Page` docs and `Bonito.configure_server!`.
See the [headless](@ref "Using WGLMakie") documentation for more about setting up the Bonito server and port forwarding.

### WebGL Compatibility

Some browsers may have only WebGL 1.0, or need extra steps to enable WebGL, but in general, all modern browsers on [mobile and desktop should support WebGL 2.0](https://www.lambdatest.com/web-technologies/webgl2).
Safari users may need to [enable](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8655829) WebGL, though.
If you end up stuck on WebGL 1.0, the main missing feature will be `volume` & `contour(volume)`.


## Activation and screen config

Activate the backend by calling `WGLMakie.activate!()` with the following options:

@docs WGLMakie.activate!

### Loading Spinner

WGLMakie shows a loading spinner while the scene is being initialized. By default, a `CircleSpinner` is displayed, but you can customize or remove it.

#### Removing the Spinner

To remove the spinner entirely, pass `nothing`:

julia WGLMakie.activate!(; spinner=nothing)

#### Styling the Default Spinner

The default `CircleSpinner` accepts several styling options:

julia using WGLMakie

Customize the spinner's appearance

spinner = WGLMakie.CircleSpinner(; size=100, # diameter in pixels stroke=10, # border width in pixels color="red", # color of the spinning part background_color="rgba(1, 0, 0, 0.9)", # color of the background circle duration=1 # rotation speed in seconds ) WGLMakie.activate!(; spinner=spinner)

#### Using a Custom Spinner

To create a custom spinner, define a struct and implement `Bonito.jsrender`. This pattern ensures each scene gets its own spinner instance (avoiding shared DOM issues):

julia using WGLMakie using Bonito

Define a custom spinner struct

struct TextSpinner message::String background::String end

Implement jsrender to create fresh DOM on each render

function Bonito.jsrender(session::Bonito.Session, spinner::TextSpinner) container_styles = Bonito.Styles( Bonito.CSS( ".wglmakie-spinner", "position" => "absolute", "top" => "50%", "left" => "50%", "transform" => "translate(-50%, -50%)", "background" => spinner.background, "padding" => "20px", "border-radius" => "8px", "z-index" => "1000", "color" => "white", "font-size" => "14px", ) ) return Bonito.jsrender(session, Bonito.DOM.div(container_styles, spinner.message; class="wglmakie-spinner")) end

Use the custom spinner

custom_spinner = TextSpinner("Loading visualization...", "rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7)") WGLMakie.activate!(; spinner=custom_spinner)

Note: The `wglmakie-spinner` class is required as WGLMakie uses it to find and remove the spinner once the scene is fully loaded.

### HTML Native Widgets

WGLMakie supports rendering Makie's interactive widgets (Slider, Button, Menu, Textbox, Checkbox, Toggle) as native HTML elements instead of canvas-based graphics. This can be enabled with:

julia WGLMakie.activate!(; use_html_widgets = true)

#### Implementation

- Replaces Makie Block widgets with native HTML `<input>`, `<button>`, `<select>`, etc. elements with Bonito
- HTML widgets are positioned absolutely over the canvas to match the layout position of the Makie widget
- Bidirectional synchronization between the Makie widget and HTML elements
- We tried to match most styling attributes, but exact look is not guaranteed. For now, it also doesn't support updating styling attributes.
- We still create the whole Makie widget, but don't render it; instead, we sync it with the HTML element

**Pros:**
- Native browser controls provide better performance (e.g., for Makie native widgets, just a hover takes quite a bit of data round-tripping between the browser and Julia) and are independent of the Julia event loop
- Proper text input support (cursor positioning, text selection, copy/paste)

**Cons:**
- Screenshot/export functionality needs special handling to capture HTML elements
- Some advanced Makie styling options may not translate to HTML
- With the current implementation, we still have the overhead of creating the plots for the native widgets (should be a minimal one-time cost though)

**Example:**

julia using WGLMakie WGLMakie.activate!(; use_html_widgets = true)

fig = Figure() ax = Axis(fig[1, 1]) sl = Makie.Slider(fig[2, 1], range = 0:0.1:10, startvalue = 5, tellwidth=false) btn = Makie.Button(fig[3, 1], label = "Click me", tellwidth=false) x = 0:10 lines!(ax, x, map(y -> sin.(y .* x), sl.value)) fig # Will get rendered with HTML widgets

You can also use this locally in a Bonito app:

julia App() do DOM.div(WGLMakie.WithConfig(fig; use_html_widget=true)) end

## Output

You can use Bonito and WGLMakie in Pluto, IJulia, Webpages and Documenter to create interactive apps and dashboards, serve them on live webpages, or export them to static HTML.

This tutorial will run through the different modes and what kind of limitations to expect.

### Page

`Page()` can be used to reset the Bonito state needed for multipage output, as is the case for `Documenter` or the various notebooks (IJulia/Pluto/etc).
Previously, it was necessary to always insert and display the `Page` call in notebooks, but now the call to `Page()` is optional and doesn't need to be displayed.
What it does is purely reset the state for a new multi-page output, which is usually the case for `Documenter`, which creates multiple pages in one Julia session, or you can use it to reset the state in notebooks, e.g. after a page reload.
`Page(exportable=true, offline=true)` can be used to force inlining all data & js dependencies, so that everything can be loaded in a single HTML object without a running Julia process. The defaults should already be chosen this way for e.g. Documenter, so this should mostly be used for e.g. `Pluto` offline export (which is currently not fully supported, but should be soon).

Here is an example of how to use this in Franklin:

@example wglmakie using WGLMakie using Bonito, Markdown Page() # for Franklin, you still need to configure WGLMakie.activate!() Makie.inline!(true) # Make sure to inline plots into Documenter output! scatter(1:4, color=1:4)

As you can see, the output is completely static, because we don't have a running Julia server, as would be the case with e.g. Pluto.
To make the plot interactive, we will need to write more parts of WGLMakie in JS, which is an ongoing effort.
As you can see, the interactivity already keeps working for 3D:

@example wglmakie N = 60 function xy_data(x, y) r = sqrt(x^2 + y^2) r == 0.0 ? 1f0 : (sin(r)/r) end l = range(-10, stop = 10, length = N) z = Float32[xy_data(x, y) for x in l, y in l] surface( -1..1, -1..1, z, colormap = :Spectral )

There are a couple of ways to keep interacting with Plots in a static export.

## Record a statemap

Bonito allows recording a statemap for all widgets that satisfy the following interface:

julia

must be true to be found inside the DOM

is_widget(x) = true

Updating the widget isn't dependent on any other state (only thing supported right now)

is_independant(x) = true

The values a widget can iterate

function value_range end

updating the widget with a certain value (usually an observable)

function update_value!(x, value) end

Currently, only sliders overload the interface:

@example wglmakie using Observables

App() do session::Session n = 10 index_slider = Slider(1:n) volume = rand(n, n, n) slice = map(index_slider) do idx return volume[:, :, idx] end fig = Figure() ax, cplot = contour(fig[1, 1], volume) rectplot = linesegments!(ax, Rect(-1, -1, 12, 12), linewidth=2, color=:red) on(index_slider) do idx translate!(rectplot, 0,0,idx) end heatmap(fig[1, 2], slice) slider = DOM.div("z-index: ", index_slider, index_slider.value) return Bonito.record_states(session, DOM.div(slider, fig)) end

## Execute JavaScript directly

Bonito makes it easy to build whole HTML and JS applications.
You can, for example, directly register JavaScript functions that get run on change.

@example wglmakie using Bonito

App() do session::Session s1 = Slider(1:100) slider_val = DOM.p(s1[]) # initialize with current value # call the on_update function whenever s1.value changes in JS: onjs(session, s1.value, js"""function on_update(new_value) { //interpolating of DOM nodes and other Julia values work mostly as expected: const p_element = $(Expr(:incomplete, Base.Meta.ParseError("ParseError:\n# Error @ none:1:8\n(slider\n# └ ── Expected ) or ,", Base.JuliaSyntax.ParseError(Base.JuliaSyntax.SourceFile("(slider", 0, "none", 1, [1, 8]), Base.JuliaSyntax.Diagnostic[Base.JuliaSyntax.Diagnostic(8, 7, :error, "Expected ) or ,")], :other))))_val) p_element.innerText = new_value } """)

return DOM.div("slider 1: ", s1, slider_val)

end

One can also interpolate plots into JS and update those via JS.
The problem is that there isn't a great interface yet.
The returned object is directly a THREE object, with all plot attributes converted into JavaScript types.
The good news is that all attributes should be in either `three_scene.material.uniforms` or `three_scene.geometry.attributes`.
Going forward, we should create an API in WGLMakie that makes it as easy as in Julia: `plot.attribute = value`.
But while this isn't in place, logging the returned object makes it pretty easy to figure out what to do—the JS console + logging is amazing and makes it very easy to play around with the object once logged.

@example wglmakie using Bonito: on_document_load using WGLMakie

App() do session::Session s1 = Slider(1:100) slider_val = DOM.p(s1[]) # initialize with current value

fig, ax, splot = scatter(1:4)

# With on_document_load one can run JS after everything got loaded.
# This is an alternative to `evaljs`, which we can't use here,
# since it gets run asap, which means the plots won't be found yet.
on_document_load(session, js"""
    // you get a promise for an array of plots, when interpolating into JS:
    $(splot).then(plots=>{
        // just one plot for atomics like scatter, but for recipes it can be multiple plots
        const scatter_plot = plots[0]
        // open the console with Ctrl+Shift+I to inspect the values
        // tip - you can right click on the log and store the actual variable as a global, and directly interact with it to change the plot.
        console.log(scatter_plot)
        console.log(scatter_plot.material.uniforms)
        console.log(scatter_plot.geometry.attributes)
    })
""")

# with the above, we can find out that the positions are stored in `offset`
# (*sigh*, this is because threejs special cases `position` attributes so it can't be used)
# Now, let's go and change them when using the slider :)
onjs(session, s1.value, js"""function on_update(new_value) {
    $(splot).then(plots=>{
        const scatter_plot = plots[0]
        // change first point x + y value
        scatter_plot.geometry.attributes.pos.array[0] = (new_value/100) * 4
        scatter_plot.geometry.attributes.pos.array[1] = (new_value/100) * 4
        // this always needs to be set on geometry attributes after an update
        scatter_plot.geometry.attributes.pos.needsUpdate = true
    })
}
""")
# and for good measure, add a slider to change the color:
color_slider = Slider(LinRange(0, 1, 100))
onjs(session, color_slider.value, js"""function on_update(hue) {
    $(splot).then(plots=>{
        const scatter_plot = plots[0]
        const color = new THREE.Color()
        color.setHSL(hue, 1.0, 0.5)
        scatter_plot.material.uniforms.color.value.x = color.r
        scatter_plot.material.uniforms.color.value.y = color.g
        scatter_plot.material.uniforms.color.value.z = color.b
    })
}""")

markersize = Slider(1:100)
onjs(session, markersize.value, js"""function on_update(size) {
    $(splot).then(plots=>{
        const scatter_plot = plots[0]
        scatter_plot.material.uniforms.markersize.value.x = size
        scatter_plot.material.uniforms.markersize.value.y = size
    })
}""")
return DOM.div(s1, color_slider, markersize, fig)

end

This summarizes the current state of interactivity with WGLMakie inside static pages.


## Offline Tooltip

`Makie.DataInspector` works just fine with WGLMakie, but it requires a running Julia process to show and update the tooltip.

There is also a way to show a tooltip in JavaScript directly, which needs to be inserted into the HTML DOM.
This means, we actually need to use `Bonito.App` to return a `DOM` object:

@example wglmakie App() do session f, ax, pl = scatter(1:4, markersize=100, color=Float32[0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6]) custom_info = ["a", "b", "c", "d"] on_click_callback = js"""(plot, index) => { // the plot object is currently just the raw THREEJS mesh console.log(plot) // Which can be used to extract e.g. position or color: const {pos, color} = plot.geometry.attributes console.log(pos) console.log(color) const x = pos.array[index_2] // everything is a flat array in JS const y = pos.array[index_2+1] const c = Math.round(color.array[index] * 10) / 10 // rounding to a digit in JS const custom = $(Expr(:incomplete, Base.Meta.ParseError("ParseError:\n# Error @ none:1:8\n(custom\n# └ ── Expected ) or ,", Base.JuliaSyntax.ParseError(Base.JuliaSyntax.SourceFile("(custom", 0, "none", 1, [1, 8]), Base.JuliaSyntax.Diagnostic[Base.JuliaSyntax.Diagnostic(8, 7, :error, "Expected ) or ,")], :other))))_info)[index] // return either a string, or an HTMLNode: return "Point: <" + x + ", " + y + ">, value: " + c + " custom: " + custom } """

# ToolTip(figurelike, js_callback; plots=plots_you_want_to_hover)
tooltip = WGLMakie.ToolTip(f, on_click_callback; plots=pl)
return DOM.div(f, tooltip)

end

## Styling

Bonito allows loading arbitrary CSS, and `DOM.xxx` wraps all existing HTML tags.
So any CSS file can be used, e.g. even libraries like [Tailwind](https://tailwindcss.com/) with `Asset`:

julia TailwindCSS = Bonito.Asset("/path/to/tailwind.min.css")

Bonito also offers the `Styles` type, which allows to define whole stylesheets and assign them to any DOM object.
That's how Bonito creates styleable components:

julia Rows(args...) = DOM.div(args..., style=Styles( "display" => "grid", "grid-template-rows" => "fr", "grid-template-columns" => "repeat(length(args), fr)", ))

This Style object will only be inserted one time into the DOM in one Session, and subsequent uses will just give the div the same class.

Note, that Bonito already defines something like the above `Rows`:

@example wglmakie using Colors using Bonito

App() do session::Session hue_slider = Slider(0:360) color_swatch = DOM.div(class="h-6 w-6 p-2 m-2 rounded shadow") onjs(session, hue_slider.value, js"""function (hue){ $(Expr(:incomplete, Base.Meta.ParseError("ParseError:\n# Error @ none:1:7\n(color\n# └ ── Expected ) or ,", Base.JuliaSyntax.ParseError(Base.JuliaSyntax.SourceFile("(color", 0, "none", 1, [1, 7]), Base.JuliaSyntax.Diagnostic[Base.JuliaSyntax.Diagnostic(7, 6, :error, "Expected ) or ,")], :other))))_swatch).style.backgroundColor = "hsl(" + hue + ",60%,50%)" }""") return Row(hue_slider, color_swatch) end

Bonito also offers a styleable Card component:

@example wglmakie using Markdown

App() do session::Session # We can now use this wherever we want: fig = Figure(size=(300, 300)) contour(fig[1,1], rand(4,4)) card = Card(Grid( Centered(DOM.h1("Hello"); style=Styles("grid-column" => "1 / 3")), StylableSlider(1:100; style=Styles("grid-column" => "1 / 3")), DOM.img(src="https://julialang.org/assets/infra/logo.svg"), fig; columns="1fr 1fr", justify_items="stretch" )) # Markdown creates a DOM as well, and you can interpolate # arbitrary jsrender'able elements in there: return DOM.div(card) end

Hopefully, over time there will be helper libraries with lots of stylised elements like the above, to make flashy dashboards with Bonito + WGLMakie.

# Export

Documenter just renders the plots + Page as HTML, so if you want to inline WGLMakie/Bonito objects into your own page,
one can just use something like this:

julia using WGLMakie, Bonito, FileIO WGLMakie.activate!()

open("index.html", "w") do io println(io, """ <html> <head> </head> <body> """) Page(exportable=true, offline=true) # Then, you can just inline plots or whatever you want 😃 # Of course it would make more sense to put this into a single app app = App() do C(x;kw...) = Card(x; height="fit-content", width="fit-content", kw...) figure = (; size=(300, 300)) f1 = scatter(1:4; figure) f2 = mesh(load(assetpath("brain.stl")); figure) C(DOM.div( Bonito.StylableSlider(1:100), Row(C(f1), C(f2)) ); padding="30px", margin="15px") end show(io, MIME"text/html"(), app) # or anything else from Bonito, or that can be displayed as html: println(io, """ </body> </html> """) end

You can also simply export a plot into a self contained HTML file:

julia using Bonito export_static("plot.html", App(scatter(rand(Point2f, 100)))) ```