feature: VCR controls

[BenWibking]

Would it be possible to add playback controls to automatically advance/reverse the iterations in a series similar to VCR controls?

In Paraview or VisIt, there is functionality like this: https://visit-sphinx-github-user-manual.readthedocs.io/en/develop/using_visit/WorkingWithFiles/Time_Pane.html

[BenWibking]

The current slider widget is:

openPMD-viewer/openpmd_viewer/openpmd_timeseries/interactive.py

Line 304 in 30b8e16

slider = widgets.IntSlider( description="iteration",

I think this could be done by replacing this with the "Play (Animation)" widget: https://ipywidgets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/examples/Widget%20List.html#play-animation-widget

Additional desired controls would be first frame/last frame/previous frame/next frame buttons (similar to: jupyter-widgets/ipywidgets#717). This could also be implemented using the existing previous/next iteration buttons.

[RemiLehe]

Interesting idea!
Do you think that you could implement this on a branch of openPMD-viewer, so that we can experiment with it, and see what the user experience feels like?

[BenWibking]

Sure, happy to give it a try!