In general, I find the reading and marking of messages very good and clear...with 1 exception. 
When I click on an "Info" level message I get a blue background with white text. If I click on and "Fatal, Error, Warning, or Debug" level message I get the same highlighting, blue background with white text. When going through the file I often find myself searching the text or Level column to confirm whether the record I have selected is actually an error level message or Info. I will often click off the record to see the level color and then back on because it's faster than looking for text or level. This is a minor thing...but if you do it 25 times each log, the incremental increase becomes noticeable. The other place I find this annoying is that if the entire message is not visible, such as when part of the cell is at the bottom of the records pane (i.e. only 5 of 10 lines are visible in a cell), when I click on the record, the entire record jumps (scrolls) up so that all lines viewable can be seen. This is fine, but I instantly find myself clicking off/on the record to confirm I'm on the same record and Level.

So, the suggestion here is to use a different color highlighting when the selected record is not an info message. Ideally, this would be different for each level but it would provide instant confirmation of the selected records level without having to re-look at the text or click off/on.

Regards!!!
BillG

....or another thought....leave the colors original and just add a thick border around the selected record.
BillG

Thanks for the feedback Bill.

That's an interesting idea and I can see where color coding the selection would be helpful.  The trouble is that "selection" is very important and this needs to be clear to the user.  There are also problems with making the colors work together regardless of skin.  Also, I am a bit worried about creating a 'color explosion' when multiple rows are selected.  I think whatever is done here should be relatively subtle.

I would like to convey this information in a different way, but I am not sure how.  My first thought was the row indicator, but this would then conflict with the merge file behavior (which uses color to indicated log file).  I could possibly use the 'color circle' images here.  That might work.



What if, instead of modifying the row, we highlighted the log level within the log entry?  Maybe with a bold font and use the appropriate log level color?  ...or maybe a light background color?  Would that help?  I think this would be less helpful with narrow log levels like '2', but it might be a step in the right direction.



Toby

Toby,
       Thought about the "color explosion" too as well as the difficulty of finding combinations for everything that are easy to see.
That was where the second thought about the thick border came in. This would leave all highlighting unchanged and then just add the thick blue (or whatever) border around the record. I would think this might be easier to implement considering you are already highlighting the selection. This would just be a border rather than highlight. Selection would still be clear and level visibility the same.
Bill

I think this is a good idea, but if you select 10 rows, all 10 rows should ideally still indicate the row log level.  This approach might start to get visually confusing if too much information is displayed - especially if the rows are different log levels.

We should probably implement highlighting of the log level in the text area anyway as I think this will make the log entry easier to read.  Once this is implemented, it may resolve the issue.