The animint() function creates a local directory with HTML/JavaScript files to render the data viz, but these days most web browsers have a default setting which blocks execution of JavaScript from local files.
The easiest way to solve this issue is by enabling local JavaScript execution in your web browser.
For example in Firefox:
- Open up a new tab. Type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter.
- A button appears asking if you accept the risk to change advanced settings. Click that you accept the risk.
- Type origin in the search box, which will filter the list for words containing this word.
- Double click the privacy.file_unique_origin or security.fileuri.strict_origin_policy preference (depending on your firefox version) to switch the value from true to false
Or in Chrome follow this SO answer: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20748630/load-local-javascript-file-in-chrome-for-testing/25107674
Alternately, if you can't turn on local JavaScript execution in your web browser for some reason, then you can try serving the animint html/JS using a local web server, which should work with any web browser. After rendering, animint2 prints a message which says to try using servr::httd("path/to/index.html") which should open a browser window with that URL. (and it should render the animint in that web page, whether or not you switch the privacy.file_unique_origin preference)
Alternatively, instead of using animint(viz) which saves/renders on your local computer, you can try animint2gist(viz) which saves the viz on GitHub Gist, and renders using bl.ocks.org. Beware that Gist imposes some limits. In March 2016 Gist imposed a maximum of 300 files per gist, and a maximum of 1 megabyte per file. The animint2gist function should stop with an error if your animint exceeds either of these limits. If you run into this problem, you may be able to use the chunk_vars option to edit the number and size of files produced by animint. Otherwise, try publishing your animint using one of the other sharing methods.
> animint2gist(viz)
Loading required namespace: gistr
Error: Requires authentication
GitHub response headers suggest no or insufficient scopes
To create gists you need the `gist` OAuth scope on your token.
In addition: Warning message:
In file.remove(vendor.path) :
cannot remove file 'C:\Users\th798\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpIF5jaZ\file3e20462d2234/vendor', reason 'Permission denied'
This happens if you have an old version of gistr, https://github.com/ropensci/gistr/issues/83 To fix you should re-install gistr and then restart R.
remotes::install_github("ropensci/gistr")
## restart R.
animint2gist(viz) # should work!If you are having difficulty properly loading gists onto the web page. you may be seeing this when running animint2gist():
If other troubleshooting methods have not worked, there may be a library or package conflict from another program that you have run recently. You may have noticed this especially if animint2gist() was previously displaying your animint correctly on bl.ocks.org, but then after you ran code in another program that used a different set of libraries or created another animint that was not properly coded, your previously working animint now loads a blank web page.
One way to fix this is to first manually deselect the animint2 package in the System Library package list in RStudio.
If this still doesn't fix the blank web page problem, then deselect other checked-off packages and re-run the code. This should eliminate any extraneous package conflicts.
If these packages (especially other graphics-related ones) become checked/selected again by running code from a different program, simply deselect them from the System Library package list. One way to reproduce this library conflict is by re-selecting the ggplot2 package.
It will either cause your animints to be blank or show this error:
As stated previously, simply de-select this in your system library and re-run your code. Be sure to check-off other potentially conflicting graphic libraries if the issue persists.