First of all have you considered using the built in RSS feed? With an RSS reader new entries are shown in a local notification box similar to new email. Some people like it.

1) This is not directly possible, but there is a trick: Define a URL to each logbook and put it into the Bookmarks Toolbar of Firefox. If you have many logbooks, this will however clutter up your toolbar. Then I recommend to make a subfolder in the toolbar and put them into it. Now firefox has the neat feature that if you click with the right mouse button on the folder, it offers you "Open All in Tabs". If you select this, you get a tab for each logbook in fireforx, and you can browse through each logbook individually.

2) This function was there long time ago (since I needed it myself) but somehow vanished. I added it back in revision 2126. You can now craft an URL like

https://midas.psi.ch/elogs/Forum/past-8

to show the last 8 hours.

I am using the CMS ELog remotely as a monitoring tool.  Information is compartementalized into dozens of containers.  I can create a find query URL, say last day, which then reloads every X minutes in Firefox.  When new ELog entries are made, then appear in the refresh and catch my attention.  But, my interests are somewhere between a single logbook and all logbooks.  If I choose all CMS logbooks for example for one day, I usually end up with > 200 entries. 

In short, I would like the ability to:

1) Select from the list of available logbooks when doing a search

2) Have more canned choices from smaller time frames, such as 1 hour or at least one shift (8 hours).

I do not see how to do this in the current elogd.cfg syntax instructions.

Thanks, Alan

 No, this is not possible.

Apart from logging when and who, is it also possible to somehow log WHAT has changed (like $attribute + $old_value was changed by $who at $date)

 I put your request on the wish list.