News & updates released in 2020 (page 6)
v20.3.2: Smaller thumbs return and dark “Classic” shelf fixed
In yesterday’s build the thumbnails couldn’t be set as small as they used to and we forgot to put in the dark background for the classic images view. Both fixed now!
Fixed:
- Thumbnails can now be set as small as before
- Classic shelf in dark skin: dark background was missing
New in the Add Books screen of your Book Connect software: the ability to select your Primary and Secondary “search regions”. The selected regions affect which 3rd party book sources our Core search engine uses when a book is NOT found in Core.
For example, if you set the primary region to Italy, and then search for an ISBN that is not in our Core yet, it will go out and search several Italian online book sources (e.g. national libraries).
If you are in the US or UK, this setting will not make much of a different to you (as those have always been the preconfigured default regions), but if you are located elsewhere in the world, setting your regions accordingly may greatly improve your success rate on book searches.
When users send us screenshots during support conversations, we are seeing that many of you are using the Shelves View when browsing your collections. And we can’t blame you, that IS a cool looking view 🙂 However, it *could* be a bit slow and jerky, especially when displaying many cover images in one list.
So our Windows guy Joe has spent several weeks to make this Shelves View faster and smoother. At the same time, our in-house graphics man AJ has created two new Shelf styles. Here’s what’s new:
- Images are now loading a lot faster.
- Scrolling is faster and smoother.
- Shelves background is smoother, no more visible tile edges.
- Shelves now always continue over the full width, even when a row is not full.
- Two new Shelf Styles are now available: White and Concrete.
The new “White” style:
The new “Concrete” style:
One of the most common complaints about the CLZ Music app has always been the lack of support for multi-disc albums. So we finally sat down and designed a good user interface to fix these problems once and for all.
The solution we implemented has two parts:
Add Albums screen: Add as Multi-Disc Album
This lets you add your new multi-disc albums the right way, straight from the Add Albums screen. Just select multiple 1-disc results and add them combined into a multi-disc album.
Merge existing albums into a Multi-Disc Album
This is for existing entries in our app, where the discs of a multi-disc album may be listed as separate albums. You can now combine/merge these into one album with multiple discs. Just tap and hold to select the albums, then select MERGE from the menu button.
Redesigned Select Folder Field screen
Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. We decided to come up with a better solution.
This update includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Artist, Genre, Format) instantly accessible at the top.
Fixed:
- In the Add from Core screen, when adding an album that is already in your app as ‘On Wish List’ or ‘On Order’, the app will now offer to change its status to ‘In Collection’
- When scanning barcodes the “beep” sound would only sound on the first scan
- Search on own collection could be forgotten during scrolling/browsing your collection
- Field defaults screen could cause a crash
One of the most common complaints about the CLZ Music app has always been the lack of support for multi-disc albums. So we finally sat down and designed a good user interface to fix these problems once and for all.
The solution we implemented has two parts:
Add Albums screen: Add as Multi-Disc Album
This lets you add your new multi-disc albums the right way, straight from the Add Albums screen. Just select multiple 1-disc results and add them combined into a multi-disc album.
Merge existing albums into a Multi-Disc Album
This is for existing entries in our app, where the discs of a multi-disc album may be listed as separate albums. You can now combine/merge these into one album with multiple discs. Just tap and hold to select the albums, then select MERGE from the menu button.
Redesigned Select Folder Field screen
Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. We decided to come up with a better solution.
This update includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Artist, Genre, Format) instantly accessible at the top.
Fixed:
- Details view didn’t show multiple artists for single tracks
- Edit Screen: disc button could change colors when it shouldn’t
CLZ Alwin here, with a slightly delayed CLZ Newsletter for May 2020.
I hope you and your family are still safe and healthy. In the Netherlands, we are slowly loosening the lockdown. With schools, bars and restaurants opening up again, normal life is returning, step by step.
However, for Collectorz.com we have decided to keep working from home for now. If only to prevent our team members from having to use public transport. Safety first!
This decision was made easier by the fact that we are fully operational in our “work from home” situation. Just look at last month’s releases:
- CLZ Comics 5.6 + Comic Connect: Better barcode recognition for older comics!
- CLZ mobile apps:
- CLZ Comics 5.5: New folder options for Creators and Characters
- CLZ Movies 5.5: New folder option for Actors
- Connect web-based software:
- Connect (all): New Crop and Rotate tool for cover images
- Comic Connect: Submit to Core
- Music Connect: Improved track list editing in Edit Album screen
- Comic Connect: Better barcode recognition for older comics!
- Coming up soon:
- Coming up for Windows: Faster Shelves View + 2 new Shelf Styles
- Coming up for iOS/Android: CLZ Music 5.5, with Add / Merge Multi-Disc Albums
As you all know, we have seen no new comic releases in the past 2 months. Luckily, things are slowly starting up again. At Collectorz.com, we took this opportunity to focus on the older comics in our database, especially the 1970 to 2000 era, where barcode recognition by our Core was still “below par”.
And with today’s CLZ Comics update, you can start enjoying the fruits of our labor!
Better barcode search results for older comics (1970 to 2000 era)
- Over 35 thousand extra barcodes are now being recognized.
- Add By Barcode feature now correctly handles multiple comics with the same barcode (quite common in this era) and nicely just presents to you all comics that match your searched barcode, even when spread over multiple series.
- Improved barcode search engine.
In the screenshot below you can see a barcode that is used in 9 issues spread over 3 series. The Add Screen will now show you all possible results we have for that barcode:
Re-designed search results in Add Comics screen
While we were at it, we also re-designed the search result entries for both title and barcode searches:
- Clearer layout of all search result entries.
- Issue numbers are now listed in “badges” on the left, separate from series titles and now change color depending on Collection Status.
As you all know, we have seen no new comic releases in the past 2 months. Luckily, things are slowly starting up again. At Collectorz.com, we took this opportunity to focus on the older comics in our database, especially the 1970 to 2000 era, where barcode recognition by our Core was still “below par”.
And with today’s CLZ Comics update, you can start enjoying the fruits of our labor!
Better barcode search results for older comics (1970 to 2000 era)
- Over 35 thousand extra barcodes are now being recognized.
- Add By Barcode feature now correctly handles multiple comics with the same barcode (quite common in this era) and nicely just presents to you all comics that match your searched barcode, even when spread over multiple series.
- Improved barcode search engine.
In the screenshot below you can see a barcode that is used in 9 issues spread over 3 series. The Add Screen will now show you all possible results we have for that barcode:
Re-designed search results in Add Comics screen
While we were at it, we also re-designed the search result entries for both title and barcode searches:
- Clearer layout of all search result entries.
- Issue numbers are now listed in “badges” on the left, separate from series titles and now change color depending on Collection Status.
As you all know, we have seen no new comic releases in the past 2 months. Luckily, things are slowly starting up again. At Collectorz.com, we took this opportunity to focus on the older comics in our database, especially the 1970 to 2000 era, where barcode recognition by our Core was still “below par”. And as of today, you can start enjoying the fruits of our labor!
Better barcode search results for older comics (1970 to 2000 era)
- Over 35 thousand extra barcodes are now being recognized.
- Add By Barcode feature now correctly handles multiple comics with the same barcode (quite common in this era) and nicely just presents to you all comics that match your searched barcode, even when spread over multiple series.
- Improved barcode search engine.
In the screenshot below you can see a barcode that is used in 9 issues spread over 3 series. The Add Screen will now show you all possible results we have for that barcode:
Re-designed search results in Add Comics screen
While we were at it, we also re-designed the search result entries for both title and barcode searches:
- Clearer layout of all search result entries.
- Issue numbers are now listed in “badges” on the left, separate from series titles and now change color depending on Collection Status.
New in the Cover tab of your Edit screen: built-in Crop and Rotate tools for your cover images!
Super useful for fine-tuning images that you uploaded or found through the Find Online tool. You can even Crop/Rotate images that you received from Core, in which case they will be automatically turned into a custom image.
To use the new Crop/Rotate tools, open your Edit screen go to the Cover tab and click the “Crop/Rotate” icon on the top right above the Front or Back cover image:
Then:
- Click the Rotate icon to rotate the image 90 degrees to the right.
- Drag the blue crop rectangle to indicate your desired crop area.
- Click Apply to apply the changes.
Adding Actors as folder option has been on our ideas list for a long time, but it was never implemented because of performance problems.
After all, on large collections, the list of actors can get HUGE.
But during the past few weeks, our mobile team has been working to improve the performance of the folder lists, including the recently introduced folder list search.
Soo… today we can finally introduce Actors as a folder option!
(BTW: the performance improvements we made will also make your other folders faster!)
New folder options for Actors
With this update, we’re introducing an Actors folder option:
IMPORTANT: for correct sorting of actor folders, you first need to use Update from Core on all your movies. Here’s how:
- Go to your All Movies list.
- Tap and hold on 1 movie to select it, then choose Select All on the top right.
- Now tap the menu icon on the bottom right, then choose Update from Core.
Redesigned Select Folder Field screen
Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. And with todays addition of yet another folder option, we decided to come up with a better solution.
That is why version 5.5 also includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Format, Director, Actor, Location, IMDb Rating) instantly accessible at the top (see screenshot above).
Faster Update from Core
The Update from Core feature has become essential in this update, so that you can retrieve the correct sort names for your Actors from Core and get nicely sorted Actor folder list.
However, on large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your movies one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every movie.
So for this 5.5 update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 movies at a time, making it much much faster!
Fixed:
- Sorting on Release Date could be off within the same year
Enjoy!
Fixed:
- In the Add from Core screen, when adding a game that is already in your app as ‘On Wish List’ or ‘On Order’, the app will now offer to change its status to ‘In Collection’
- When scanning barcodes the “beep” sound would only sound on the first scan
- Set Data language is now also used during syncing
- Search on own collection could be forgotten during scrolling/browsing your collection
Enjoy!
Adding Actors as folder option has been on our ideas list for a long time, but it was never implemented because of performance problems.
After all, on large collections, the list of actors can get HUGE.
But during the past few weeks, our mobile team has been working to improve the performance of the folder lists, including the recently introduced folder list search.
Soo… today we can finally introduce Actors as a folder option!
(BTW: the performance improvements we made will also make your other folders faster!)
New folder options for Actors
With this update, we’re introducing an Actors folder option:
IMPORTANT: for correct sorting of actor folders, you first need to use Update from Core on all your movies. Here’s how:
- Go to your All Movies list.
- Tap and hold on 1 movie to select it, then choose Select All on the top right.
- Now tap the menu icon on the bottom right, then choose Update from Core.
Redesigned Select Folder Field screen
Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. And with todays addition of yet another folder option, we decided to come up with a better solution.
That is why version 5.5 also includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Format, Director, Actor, Location, IMDb Rating) instantly accessible at the top (see screenshot above).
Faster Update from Core
The Update from Core feature has become essential in this update, so that you can retrieve the correct sort names for your Actors from Core and get nicely sorted Actor folder list.
However, on large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your movies one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every movie.
So for this 5.5 update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 movies at a time, making it much much faster!
Fixed:
- Sorting on Release Date could be off within the same year
Enjoy!
Adding Creators and Characters as folder options has been on our ideas list for a long time, but it was never implemented because of performance problems.
After all, on large collections, the list of creators or characters can get HUGE.
But during the past few weeks, our mobile team has been working to improve the performance of the folder lists, including the recently introduced folder list search.
Soo… today we can finally introduce the new folder options.
(BTW: the performance improvements we made will also make your Series folders faster!)
New folder options for Creators and Characters
With this update, we introduced 22 (!) new folder options:
- Characters
- All Creators (group by all creators, regardless of their “role”)
- Plus: separate folder options for all 20 creator roles:
like Artist, Colorist, Penciller, Cover Artist, Writer, etc…
IMPORTANT: for correct sorting of Creator folders, you need to use Update from Core on all your comics. Here’s how:
- Go to your All Comics list.
- Tap and hold on 1 comic to select it, then choose Select All on the top right.
- Now tap the menu icon on the bottom left, then choose Update from Core.
Redesigned Select Folder Field screen
Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. And with todays addition of 22 more folder options, we *had to* come up with a better solution.
That is why version 5.5 also includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Series, Publisher, All Creators and Storage Box) instantly accessible at the top (see screenshot above).
Faster Update from Core
The Update from Core feature has become essential in this update, so that you can retrieve the correct sort names for your Creators from Core and get nicely sorted Creator folder list.
However, on large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your comics one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every comic.
So for this 5.5 update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 comics at a time, making it much much faster!
Enjoy!
Adding Creators and Characters as folder options has been on our ideas list for a long time, but it was never implemented because of performance problems.
After all, on large collections, the list of creators or characters can get HUGE.
But during the past few weeks, our mobile team has been working to improve the performance of the folder lists, including the recently introduced folder list search.
Soo… today we can finally introduce the new folder options.
(BTW: the performance improvements we made will also make your Series folders faster!)
New folder options for Creators and Characters
With this update, we introduced 22 (!) new folder options:
- Characters
- All Creators (group by all creators, regardless of their “role”)
- Plus: separate folder options for all 20 creator roles:
like Artist, Colorist, Penciller, Cover Artist, Writer, etc…
IMPORTANT: for correct sorting of Creator folders, you need to use Update from Core on all your comics. Here’s how:
- Go to your All Comics list.
- Tap and hold on 1 comic to select it, then choose Select All on the top right.
- Now tap the menu icon on the bottom right, then choose Update from Core.
Redesigned Select Folder Field screen
Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. And with todays addition of 22 more folder options, we *had to* come up with a better solution.
That is why version 5.5 also includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Series, Publisher, All Creators and Storage Box) instantly accessible at the top (see screenshot above).
Faster Update from Core
The Update from Core feature has become essential in this update, so that you can retrieve the correct sort names for your Creators from Core and get nicely sorted Creator folder list.
However, on large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your comics one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every comic.
So for this 5.5 update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 comics at a time, making it much much faster!
Enjoy!
Fixed:
- “List index out of bounds” error when viewing / modifying TPB entries
After feedback from some of our most active Music Connect users, we decided to make several improvements to the track editing on the Tracks tab of the Edit Album screen:
- After clicking Add Track, the cursor is automatically put in the Title box of the added track.
- Hitting Enter while in the Title box of the last track now automatically adds another tracks AND puts the cursor in its Title box.
- Re-order discs by dragging the disc tabs.
- Use checkboxes to select tracks. From the blue action bar that appears, you can now:
- Remove the selected tracks
- AutoCap the selected tracks
- and (NEW): move the selected tracks to another disc
CLZ Core is our central online comic database, that is the database that you search by barcode or by Series in the Add Comics screen. In general, the comic information delivered by Core is quite complete and correct, but you may sometimes run into entries that are quite sparse (e.g. just series, issue number and publisher) or even entries with incorrect data.
As of today, *you* can help us improve that, using the new Submit to Core feature!
Just fill in the correct data in your own entry, then select the comic and choose Submit to Core from the toolbar above the comic details:
Which takes you to a form the core.collectorz.net site, where you can see our Core data on the left and your own data on the right. Now use the green arrow icons to use your data to correct and complete our data. Then finally, click the big green Submit Changes button on the bottom:
Thanks for your help!
This is the CLZ News for April 2020, as always brought to you by CLZ Alwin.
I hope you and your family are safe and healthy. Here in the Netherlands, all CLZ team members are staying safe by working from home.
In the meantime, this has become business as usual and we are making normal progress on all software and services. And of course, customer support is still here to help you with your questions, 7 days a week!
This month, we released 4 big updates for macOS, a huge 5.3 update for the CLZ Games mobile app and many improvements to the Connect web-based software. Here’s the full list:
- v20.1 for all macOS editions, with faster CLZ Cloud syncing!
- CLZ Games 5.3: Add Games by Platform and Add Hardware from Core
- Connect web-based software:
- Keyboard shortcuts!
- Movie/Book Connect: Submit to Core
- Music Connect: Merge multi-disc albums
- Choose all Collection Status options when adding
- Reminder: switch from desktop to Connect with our Trade-In Offer
New in Connect today: We have added several keyboard shortcuts to the most commonly used features:
For the Main screen:
- Navigate through your items with your arrow keys (works in List, Images, Shelves and Card View!)
- Use c + a or c then a for Add from Core
- Use c + m or c then m for Add Manually
- Use c + h or c then h for Add Hardware from Core (Game Connect)
- Use c + j or c then j for Add Hardware Manually (Game Connect)
- Use c + e or c then e for Edit Selected Item
For the Edit screen:
- Use cmd/ctrl + s to Save and close
- Use cmd/ctrl + j to Save and go to Previous item
- Use cmd/ctrl + k to Save and go to Next item
New:
- “Collection Status” field can now be used as a folder field
- “Storage Box” field has been added to the Add from Core Quick Fill pop up
Fixed:
- Update All Values from GoCollect did not work anymore (on large collections)
- Problems using the Add Comics screen Pull List tab
- Resources/Handles related error when Adding or Updating from Core
- Series “have/want” summaries erroneously included comics from ALL sub-collections
CLZ Core is our central online book database, that is the database that you search by ISBN or by Author/Title in the Add Books screen. In general, the book information delivered by Core quite complete and correct, but you may sometimes run into entries that are quite sparse (e.g. just author, title, publisher and date) or even entries with incorrect data.
As of today, *you* can help us improve that, using the new Submit to Core feature!
Just fill in the correct data in your own entry, then select the book and choose Submit to Core from the toolbar above the book details:
Which takes you to a form the core.collectorz.net site, where you can see our Core data on the left and your own data on the right. Now use the green arrow icons to use your data to correct and complete our data. Then finally, click the big green Submit Changes button on the bottom:
Thanks for your help!
CLZ Core is our central online movie database, that is the database that you search by Title or by Barcode in the Add Movies screen. In general, the movie information delivered by Core (cast, crew, release year, runtime, plot, etc…) is quite complete and correct, because of our official IMDb content license.
However, for some releases the edition specific information (cover image, edition, format, distributor, subtitles, regions, screen ratios and audio tracks) may be incomplete or even incorrect.
As of today, *you* can help us improve that, using the new Submit to Core feature!
Just fill in the correct data in your own entry, then select the movie and choose Submit to Core from the toolbar above the movie details:
Which takes you to a form the core.collectorz.net site, where you can see our Core data on the left and your own data on the right. Now use the green arrow icons to use your data to correct and complete our data. Then finally, click the big green Submit Changes button on the bottom:
Thanks for your help!
Fixed:
- The app could crash when editing certain fields defaults.
Fixed:
- Fixed several issues with AutoSync that could cause Access Violation errors
Fixed:
- Fixed several issues with AutoSync that could cause Access Violation errors