What's new in Book Collector? 2019

The year “twenty-twenty” is coming up, so here’s Book Collector v20 for macOS!

In this release we added support for the macOS Dark/Light Mode and enhanced the CLZ Cloud syncing system with many new fields and back cover images.

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With all the big comic and game related releases going on, it has been a few months since the last Book Collector update. But we didn’t forget you! In the background, we have been “secretly” working on a big update, which is available now as version 19.3!

Here’s what’s new:

• Many more fields now sync with the CLZ Cloud / Book Connect:
  • Audiobook length, Abridged (yes/no), Narrator
  • Illustrator, Edition, Extras, Cover Price
  • “Original” fields: Title, Subtitle, Publisher, Publication Date, Country, Language
  • AND the Back Cover image!
• The Location field has been moved to the bottom of the Edit Screen
• Collection Status field is now a dropdown menu

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As you probably know, macOS Catalina (version 10.15) was released earlier this week.
In Catalina, Apple has made two major changes, that will affect all software that you run on your Mac:

• All programs you use need to be 64-bit. No more support for 32-bit applications!
• All programs you download outside the App Store need to be notarized (=approved) by Apple.

Of course, our Book Collector software has been a 64-bit application since version 18.1 (April 2018). And this week, we got it approved and notarized by Apple too!

So today, we released Book Collector 19.1, 64-bit and notarized, so fully Catalina compatible!

Based on user feedback we found out users were looking for and expecting a tool to find duplicate entries in their database. Some way to find out if you’ve accidentally added multiple versions of the same book, but perhaps with a different ISBN.

After quite a few requests and discussions with users about this, to find out how they got duplicates and what they would expect from such a Duplicate Finder tool, it’s here today: Find Duplicate entries in your database!

New: Find Duplicate Books

Click menu Tools > Maintenance > Find Duplicates to begin.

Then select which field to find duplicates on. You can find duplicates based on:

• Title
• Title & Author
• ISBN
• Index
• All Fields

Click “Find Duplicates” and see what it comes up with. Use the blue “Keep” button to keep a group of duplicates, or use the red “Remove” button to remove a duplicate!

If you click “Remove all duplicates automatically” the program will remove all duplicate entries and will only keep 1 single entry (the oldest one) in your database.

Tip: use the columns button, top right, to set up the columns you’d like to see!

We already worked on this area in the previous update, but we were still not completely satisfied. So more tweaks to the Add button in the Add Games from Core screen today:

Tweaks to the Add button:

• All Collection Status values are now available, including “For Sale” and “On Order”!
• The little popup menu now indicates the selected value with a checkmark.
• The Add button itself now says “Add to Collection” or “Add to Wishlist”.

Screenshot from the Add button in Movie Collector:

Fixed:

• Flashing starting the program (especially visible on very big screens)
• Selected x from x items in the status bar and the total items at the top now have a bit more space
• Clicking the add button twice didn’t give an “Already in collection” warning
• Opening the program in full screen on a secondary screen didn’t work
• Add Screen: On high DPI screens, search results could take up too much space

With the big feature updates behind us (multi-collections, image syncing, 64-bit support, Flex template, etc…), it is time for some smaller tweaks that were requested by our loyal users:

• More compact toolbar layout, to save screen space
• No more annoying Add to Collection / Wish List popup in Add Books screen
• New “Transparent” styles for the Flex template, to show off your backdrops

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Book Collector version 19 has arrived! Here’s what’s new:

• Manage multiple “collections” within one database file
• Automatic Cloud-syncing of your own “custom” images
• A new super-adaptive “Flex” template for the Details Panel

Read on for the full details:

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