The first, and most important, tip...use the "E-Log Help" button you find at the bottom of every logbook.  It will answer most of your questions and you may be pleasently surprised at the depth of features available.

Most important tip... "plain text" should not contain any HTML commands. That's because, when the entry is stored, any characters "<" or ">" in plain text are replaced by the text "& lt;" and "& gt;" automatically. Thus, they will still appear as the characters "<" and ">" but the embedded HTML command will not be executed. If you want to mix HTML and plain text, then choose HTML and use the normal HTML <pre> ... </pre> for plain text, and any other HTML desired. You should always preview the entry or comment before submitting it to the e-log.

New Feature: For the Detector System elogs, when you make an entry or comment, there is a button at the bottom designating whether you want an email message to be sent informing others of the problem. A typical message looks like:

From: CDF_DetSysElog@fnal.gov 
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 10:54 -0600
Subject: Bad channels found 
To: rvidal@fnal.gov

  An entry in the Detector Systems Elog - General Logbook - at the following location: 

      http://www-cdfonline.fnal.gov/cgi-bin/det-system-elog.pl?
                                 nb=general&action=view&page=9&anchor=10:54:37

  describes a problem that needs to be remedied.

The mailing lists for each category of each Detector System elog are maintained by the e-log, and you can be added to any list by sending email to rvidal@fnal.gov.

Information about an entry can be obtained by clicking on the entry "date". This will "pop-up" another window with the entry as displayed on the elog page, the HTML which generates this entry on the page, and importantly, suggested HTML code that will create a link to this entry. In the usual way, you can then "copy and paste" from this new window to any new entry or comment.

New Feature: You can actually e-mail an entry to the detector system e-logs by sending mail to elog_www@b0www.fnal.gov, as in the following example:

To: elog_www@b0www.fnal.gov
Cc: 
Subject: Any subject
From: Anybody
<!-- Notebook: general -->
<pre> my attempt at an entry from email</pre>
<!-- Author: hahn -->

Any text between the two tags "<!--- Notebook: general -->" and "<!-- Author: hahn -->" is considered a valid entry and will be included in the detector system e-log "general" for the most recent page, and come from the author "hahn". (Everything else is ignored. The notebook designations are given in the links, e.g. "nb=l1" etc. every name is CASE SENSITIVE - not "L1".) The time of entry will be determined by the e-log code when the mail is processed. On any execution of the e-log Perl script, the mailbox will first be checked and the mail processed, so any e-mail should be included in the e-log quickly. The e-mail is deleted after it is processed. Note that if either of the two tags are missing, the message will be ignored, and then destroyed. Also, there is little security here. Anyone who sends a message to "cdf_elog", in the correct format can make an entry.

Do not be alarmed by your e-log browser window flickering; this is merely the e-log automatically refreshing the page to show any new entries. The e-log changes the "current" button to yellow if a new entry has been made since you last accessed the page. Currently, the refresh rate is once every two minutes.

Make your entries as HTML, not plain text, even if you are only writing text.  Plain text may run off the browser window and be unviewable without scrolling, but HTML always wraps to the browser window size.  (Note: some disagree with me on this point, particularly if you want to make a typed table of info.  I give a hint below, as to how you can use HTML to the same effect with minimal effort. Also, in "plain text" the line is automatically wrapped at 100 characters when displayed, so this may create undesired breaks in the text.)

HTML tags in entries can liven things up; but they can easily become very annoying.  Go easy.

The elogs currently support GIF, JPG, and PS graphics files. When a JPG or PS file is "captured", a "thumbnail" of the graphics is also created. The thumbnail is displayed on the elog page, but the full graphic can be displayed in another window by clicking on the thumbnail. If some pages take too long to download because they contain a large number of graphics, you can always instruct your browser to defer downloading graphics until you click on them (e.g. Netscape --> Edit --> Preferences --> Advanced).

"Why can't the e-log do...?"  Well, maybe they can!  Here's a quick list of features:

Make new files to shorten download times.  When logbook files get long or have many links to graphics files, page loading times can suffer.  So far, we have not been using this feature to any extent (nor graphics).

Page through all files that make up a logbook, or view a table of contents of all files.

Add comments to an already existing entry.

Do simple searchs  of the current file on a specified string.

Add graphics to entries--GIF, JPEG, or PostScript.  One or more images can be pasted wherever desired.

Links from one entry to another (even in different logbooks!) can be entered with a fairly simple mechanism.

OK, here's my hint for entering fairly complicated HTML into a logbook.  Usually, I use this if I want to add lists or tables to an entry (look in the "Wedge" logbook for some examples).  It sounds complicated, but once you do it once or twice, you'll find it's very easy.

Use the HTML editor in your browser (since you're using it anyway) to create a new page.  In Netscape, use "New Blank Page" under the "File" menu.  Edit the new HTML page using the editor tools to look however you want the entry to look in the logbook.

When you are done, display the HTML source of your new page.  In Netscape, this is "Page Source" under the "View" menu.  Now, select the entire contents of this HTML source.  On the Mac or PC, you can "Select All" and "Copy" under the "Edit" menu.  On UNIX, you can highlight the entire window with the left mouse button.

Now, go to the logbook and click the "Make Entry" button.  Delete the text in the form text box (I think just clicking on the text box does this).  Now paste in your selected HTML source.  On the Mac or PC, use "Paste" under the "Edit" menu.  On UNIX, you paste your highlighted text by pressing the middle mouse button.

Check that your entry looks correct by clicking on the HTML radio button, even though it's already on.  You should always do this, but especially in this case, just in case there is a problem with your HTML source.

If you are happy with the appearance of your entry, enter a name and click the "Submit a TEXT entry" button (OK, it shouldn't say "TEXT" but it does!)  Done!