Portable way to embed images in colab notebooks

[balopat]

Is your feature request related to a use case or problem? Please describe.

context: #3307

Describe the solution you'd like

Images should be available in an ipython notebook in our repo in all circumstances:

• downloaded as a standalone notebook
• previewed on Github
• opened in Colab
• rendered on devsite
• rendered on read the docs (for now)

[optional] Describe alternatives/workarounds you've considered

Pointing to images on github raw on master (current solution): while this works for existing images, it is hard to review a PR which has a new image coming in.

What is the urgency from your perspective for this issue? Is it blocking important work?

P1 - I need this no later than the next release (end of quarter)

[maffoo]

Do data urls work?

[balopat]

Do data urls work?

based on this SO thread it's not great but I haven't had time to try it out yet

[balopat]

So, data urls do work, the disadvantage is that it bloats the ipynb and makes it harder to read. I guess that is the price - as ipynb is a json format :)