🌿 The First eLabFTW Community Meeting — A Gathering Etched in Memory

On a quiet day that now lives only in the minds of those who were present, the first eLabFTW Community Meeting unfolded—not as a livestream, not as a downloadable file, but as a fleeting constellation of voices, thoughts, and shared enthusiasm.

There is no recording. No polished replay. No timestamped transcript.

Only laughter woven with curiosity, only questions dancing with ideas, only stories exchanged like the gentle passing of notes between lab benches in the soft morning light.

Introduction

The 5.0.0 release is a major release. You can tell because before it was 4.x.y now it’s 5.x.y. But what does it mean exactly?

The major version number has been bumped because there is a breaking change: complete drop of APIv1.

And that’s it, that is the only big thing that changes, and hopefully it won’t impact many users, as everyone is now using APIv2, right? right?

Introduction

This is a relatively small release, but it contains a major change that impacts many aspects of the application: a rework of the status and categories.

You can see the complete changelog on the release page. This blog post is more about going into details for some of the changes.

How to update (for Sysadmins)

Update like usual: see documentation.

New features

Users features

Rework of Status and Categories

This work was sponsored by Vrije Universiteit Brussel, a big thanks to them!

Introduction

This release contains at least a dozen bugfixes and many new features and improvements, all users should update.

You can see the complete changelog on the release page. This blog post is more about going into details for some of the changes.

How to update (for Sysadmins)

Update like usual: see documentation.

New features

Users features

Improvements for extra fields

Extra fields can now have units (for input of type “number”). You can define a list of possible units and it will look like this:

Introduction

This release comes quickly after 4.6.1, and thus contains only a few bugfixes and new features. Normally the bugfixes would go in 4.6.2 and new features in 4.7.0, but this time it’s a bundle with both.

So what’s new in this version?

You can see the complete changelog on the release page. This blog post is more about going into details for some of the changes.

How to update

Update like usual: see documentation.

Introduction

This release features a major user interface redesign. We worked a lot on improving how the app looks and feel, and we hope you’ll like it.

So what’s new in this version?

You can see the complete changelog on the release page. This blog post is more about going into details for some of the changes.

How to update

Update like usual: see documentation.

New features

General changes

Interface redesign

The first thing that you’ll notice is the improved interface. There are too many changes to list, but here are some of them:

Introduction

This release comes quite fast after the release of 4.4. The goal being to bring new features and bugfixes to end users faster.

So what’s new in this version?

You can see the complete changelog on the release page. This blog post is more about going into details for some of the changes.

How to update

Update like usual: see documentation.

New features

Users features

Major feature: improved permissions system

The permissions system has been overhauled. There is still the basic permissions where you can choose between “Public”, “Organization”, “All the teams I’m part of”, “User + Admins” and “Only me”, but now it is possible to combine this setting with Teams, Teamgroups or individual users. And you can have several of each, or just one, with all combinations possible.

So what’s new in this version?

You can see the complete changelog on the release page. This blog post is more about going into details for some of the changes.

How to update

Update like usual: see documentation.

New features

User features

Reaction drawing

Previously the chemical structure editor would only allow one molecule, now you can have several. Reactions can be saved as .chemjson files and re-imported in the editor. They can also be exported as PNG images (for inclusion in text for instance).

I’m very pleased to announce that eLabFTW, the free and open source electronic lab notebook version 4.3 is now available for everyone!

So what’s new in this version?

You can see the complete changelog on the release page. This blog post is more about going into details for some of the changes.

How to update

Update like usual: see documentation.

New features

General

• Soft delete: an entry will now be marked as deleted instead of being actually deleted from the database
• Same with uploaded files that are replaced
• More than 22 bugfixes!

Users features

New search interface with advanced features

Thanks to the amazing work of Marcel Bolten, the search page has been entirely revamped and improved.

I’m very pleased to announce that eLabFTW, the free and open source electronic lab notebook version 4.0.0 is now available for everyone!

This new version is PACKED with new features!

You can see the complete changelog on the release page. This blog post is more about going into details for some of the changes.

How to update

Update like usual: see documentation.

New features

Users features

• Experiments/items can no have a visibility of “user only”, previously this corresponded to owner + admin(s).
• Blockchain timestamping with Bloxberg. Click the icon with blocks in view mode to certify your results into the blockchain. It will create a zip file attached to the experiment that contains the certified pdf along with a certificate. Note that this action can take up to 30 seconds. You can certify as many times as you want.

• Use “Ctrl-Shift-d” to add the date on cursor, select the date format from your profile.