UX Feature Request: Remember settings in Container Logs view

[juarezr]

Looking for errors and information in logs is one of most common task in any developer workflow.
Any improvement in user experience and usability cuts some seconds wasted in each interation. And those are repeated a gazillion of times, accounting for a huge productivity slowdown.

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

Every time that I entre the Container logs view in portainer I need to change the same settings. E.g:

1. Turn off Wrap lines
2. Set Lines to a higher value (500, 1000, etc...)
3. Wait some seconds for Auto-refresh logs to trigger or force it by changing something in Fetch or Search

When I switch to any other view in portainer these "inputs" are lost, and when I switch back I need to repeat the steps again.

Also if I forget to turn off Auto-refresh logs, it will reset the scrolling of the log pane in the next refresh, affeting the reading of the desired log lines, and requiring a new search / look up for finding them.

Describe the solution you'd like

Some possible improvements:

1. Remeber changes in Log viewer settings when leaving and entering a container
2. Add new options in Settings > Application settings for changing values used by default in each Container Logs veiw for each container:
   1. Number of lines to load in Container Logs. Defaults to 100.
   2. Wrap lines in Container Logs
   3. Auto-refresh logs
3. Add a new action Refresh Now to trigger manual log realoding.

Other possible improvements:

1. Change Auto-refresh logs from a "yes/no" switch to a slider indicating seconds (0=once, 5s, 10s, 20s, 30s, 1min, 5min, etc...)
2. Add a spinner for using the mouse to set Lines. E.g:
   1. increase by 100 lines or
   2. increase by 30%
3. Divide the Fetch in Fetch from and To/Until parts. E.g:
   1. Fetch from last: [1] [DAYS/hours/minutes v] Until: [2] [days/HOURS/minutes v]

Describe alternatives you've considered

An alternative solution would be openning and keep separate tabs for each container to display the logs.
But this has some downsides:

• It won't help specially when one is working with many tabs for containers, documentation pages, application web-ui, and other tools
• When working with docker-compose one would switch between containers logs much often.
• It's hard to remember / find what tab is the container you can find the desired container logs because the tab title is generic (like portainer | local)
• Keeping many tabs open makes your browser bloat memory and can be invalidated by browser extensions like Snooze Tabs
• It's hard to know in advance if you need to go back to the current container log.

[hhromic]

Me and my team have the exact same concerns about the UX of the container logs view. Thanks for raising this issue.
Consider us another affected user base :)

[Panderine]

also the settings area is taking half of the screen all the time, leaving the actual logs just half the screen space. This settings options should be hidden, leaving the full page for log viewing.

[reefhound]

I would also like to see log settings remembered for each container. If that is too involved, at least allow us to set the global defaults. I also think the settings should be a collapsible accordion or other mechanism to allow hiding.

[jacekzwroclawia]

It would be so nice to have this feature working as @juarezr suggested!