Version 2.5.0 of ELOG has been released yesterday. The main new feature is 
the automatic mirroring of logbooks between different elog servers. 

This is useful if one wants to synchronize logbooks between a desktop PC 
and a laptop, for example. During synchronization, new or modified entries 
on both sides are merged intelligently. Another application is if several 
companies or institutes want to keep a ELOG database locally, but have the 
databases synchronized periodically with each other. Periodic mirroring 
can be set up with a built in cron-like facility. 

Although the synchronization has been tested extensively, I still consider 
this part in beta state. Before using it, one should make a backup of 
existing logbooks. The flag "Mirror simulate" can be used to test the 
mirroring without actually overwriting or deleting anything. If problems 
arise with mirroring, they should be reported to the author.

Localization files have been updated, so if anybody volunteers to update 
or make a new translation, please contact the author.

The elog daemon uses cascading style sheets (CSS) to format its output, such
as font family, size and color. Some people started to develop new themes
(skins) and posted them at the contributions logbook (such as
http://midas.psi.ch/elogs/Contributions/7).

From my onw experience, I know that this can be a difficult job, since it
means to change the "default.css" file and reloading a page over and over
again. I recently discovered a way to do this much easier: The Mozilla based
browsers (such as firefox, http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) have an
extension called EditCSS (http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#editcss)
which shows the CSS file on the left side of the browser and the web page on
the right side. Changes in the CSS editor are immediately reflected in the
browser window. This way one can change certain entries in the CSS file and
immediately see its consequences. Development of new skins should therefore
become much more easier.

It is not usual for me to pester people with tips around elog, but this
one was so helpful for me that I would like to share it.

The Mozilla based browsers, such as Netscape or Firefox
(http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) offer the possibility of
so-called "keymarks" or "bookmark keywords". This are bookmarks to which a
keywork can be added, making them a very powerful search tool for elog. This
can be explained most easily in an example:

Add following bookmark to your Browser:

Name: ELOG search
Location: http://midas.psi.ch/elogs/forum/?mode=full&sall=1&subtext=%s
Keyword: el

I attached a screendump of how this looks under Firefox. Now you can type

el <keyword>

in your URL address bar, and the elog forum is automatically searched for
that keyword (see second attachment), since the "%s" in the URL is
automatically replaced with your keyword. This works of course also with
your personal logbooks. The switch "sall=1" causes elog to search for the
string in the main text body and in all attributes.

The URL bar can be activated with CTRL-L, so the key sequence

CTRL-L el <keyword>

is all you need to search a ELOG logbook, even without touching the mouse.

Version 2.5.2 of ELOG has been released today. It contains CSV (comma
separated values) import and export, as well as XML export (through the
"Find" page). Since these features are new, I would appreciate some feedback
on how this works in different environments. I made sure I can import data
from Excel and Outlook (like my address book), but I have no experience with
other applications.

As with the XML export, I'm not sure if the format I chose is a good one.
People working more with XML should tell me if it should be changed.

> Version 2.5.2 of ELOG has been released today. It contains CSV (comma
> separated values) import and export, as well as XML export (through the
> "Find" page). Since these features are new, I would appreciate some feedback
> on how this works in different environments. I made sure I can import data
> from Excel and Outlook (like my address book), but I have no experience with
> other applications.
> 
> As with the XML export, I'm not sure if the format I chose is a good one.
> People working more with XML should tell me if it should be changed.

I was able to find the export feature under find. Could you let me know where 
the import feature is? Or how I turn it on.

-Charles-

> I was able to find the export feature under find. Could you let me know where 
> the import feature is? Or how I turn it on.

Oops, I frogot to document this, thank you for reminding me. You have to add the
"CSV Import" command manually to the list of menu commands, like:

Find menu commands = New, Find, Select, Config, CSV Import, Help

I was wondering if I should make this as the default, but many people maybe do not
have the demand of having CSV Import, so it might be annoying for them. What do
you think?

I develop multiple client server apps and web apps deployed on intranets. I
need my users to send me bugs with screenshots attached.

So I'm interested in auto opening a new elog page in an embedded browser and
automatically doing an attachment. I've seen a couple messages about
recently added Javascript hooks (message 465). The message specified a URL
that would fire off javascript(http://localhost/demo/?cmd=New&js=test.js).
Now apparently that wasn't fully working or at least you couldn't bring up
multiple alerts. Has that been fixed, or is it just a problem with alerts?
Can I write a url that has my attributes, plus a short js script that just
adds an attachment?

Anyhow, any info on where this functionality is would be appreciated. I'm
going back to my mgmt for signoff on using this, and if I get it (fairly
high probability), then I'll have a coder start implementing it. :-)

BTW, great tool! Very clean design.

Cheers,
Robin

> I develop multiple client server apps and web apps deployed on intranets. I
> need my users to send me bugs with screenshots attached.

Nice idea. I was looking myself for a way to automatically attach screenshots,
but I haven't found a clever way yet. One problem with attachments I found is
that it is not possible to preset the attachment text box with a file name
because this would open up a big security hole. So a malicious web page would
preset the attachment box with a file name pointing to some local password file,
then hide the box somwhere by using a tiny font etc. So if someone presses
"submit", the secret file would automatically transferred to the remote site.
Now I don't know if this can be bypassed with JavaScript.
 
> Now apparently that wasn't fully working or at least you couldn't bring up
> multiple alerts. Has that been fixed, or is it just a problem with alerts?

The JavaScript you supply simply gets copied to the web page and executed. There
are no limitations of any kind from the elog system there. So if you have
problems, it's most likely a JavaScript problem. I found it very useful to use
the Venkman debugger (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/) which can run
inside Mozilla based browsers.

> Can I write a url that has my attributes, plus a short js script that just
> adds an attachment?

It should be in principle possible, limited maybe only with the security note I
wrote above. If you get anything working, I would appreciate if you could add
this to the "contributions" section, so that other people can benefit from this.