What's new in CLZ Books? (page 3)

With so many users switching from the desktop software to the Connect web-based software, we are getting a lot of useful feedback about the things they are missing, or would like to see in Connect.

Today, a small update with 3 new settings to save screen space in the main screen:

• Show Filter Bar: uncheck this setting to hide the bar at the top with the Collection Status filter and the Alphabet Bar, giving you quite a bit more vertical screen space for your list.
• Show Collection Status indicators: uncheck this to remove the column with the status icons from your List View, giving you more horizontal room for your columns.
• Show pencil icons (for editing): uncheck this to remove the column with the pencil (edit) icons from your List View, again giving you more horizontal list space.

Oh and BTW: we also took this opportunity to complete re-think the layout of the Settings screen, to make the grouping of settings more logical. I recommend to take a good look again, maybe you will find some useful settings you never knew existed 🙂

Long overdue, but it is finally here: you can now select your own currency for all value and price fields in Book Connect.

Find the new currency settings in your Settings screen. Under Currency, choose your desired currency.
Choose from USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, NZD, CHF, NOK, SEK or DKK. Then use the Currency display setting to customize how prices and values will be displayed.

Read more

A big update for your CLZ Books app!
This time we added a new feature that will save you lots of time:

New Pre-fill screen that pops up when adding books

When adding a book to your database using the Add Books screen, it will now pop-up a new screen called “Pre-fill book details, letting you set various fields right then and there.

Fields available in the Pre-fill screen:

• Location
• Owner
• Purchase Date
• Purchase Store
• Purchase Price
• Quantity
• Tags

No more need to edit your added books afterwards!

(BTW: of course, using the new Pre-fill screen is optional. If you don’t want to use it, just uncheck the “Show Pre-fill screen” toggle at thet bottom. You can always re-enable it through the app’s Settings screen.)

Also new:

• All Collection Status options are now available under the Add button in the Add Screen.
• New look and layout of Field Defaults screen.

A big update for your CLZ Books app!
This time we added a new feature, that will save you lots of time:

New Pre-fill screen that pops up when adding books

When adding a book to your database using the Add Books screen, it will now pop-up a new screen called “Pre-fill book details, letting you set various fields right then and there.

Fields available in the Pre-fill screen:

• Location
• Owner
• Purchase Date
• Purchase Store
• Purchase Price
• Quantity
• Tags

No more need to edit your added books afterwards!

(BTW: of course, using the new Pre-fill screen is optional. If you don’t want to use it, just uncheck the “Show Pre-fill screen” toggle at thet bottom. You can always re-enable it through the app’s Settings screen.)

Also new:

• All Collection Status options are now available under the Add button in the Add Screen.
• New look and layout of Field Defaults screen.

Another big update for your Book Connect software.
This time we added a new feature, that will save you lots of time:

New Pre-fill screen that pops up when adding books

When adding a book to your database using the Add Books screen, it will now pop-up a new screen called “Pre-fill book details, letting you set various fields right then and there.

Fields available in the Pre-fill screen:

• Location
• Owner
• Purchase Date
• Purchase Store
• Purchase Price
• Quantity
• Tags

No more need to edit your added books afterwards!

Here it is, version 6.0 of the CLZ Books mobile app!
In this major update, we finally bring you THE most requested feature: being able to Edit Multiple Books in one go. But there’s more, as we took this opportunity to completely re-design the Edit Book screen and to implement super useful Crop and Rotate tools for book cover images.

Here’s the full list of what’s new in version 6.0:

NEW: Edit Multiple Books in one go!

Finally make changes to multiple (or all) book entries in one go.
Here’s how:

• Tap and hold on a book in the list to enter Select Mode
• Now tap more books to select them.
• Tap the menu button on the bottom right and choose “Edit [x] Books”.
• In the screen tap appears, select which fields you want to edit.
  
  (Tips: use the search box to find fields, tap the heart icons to set Favorite fields)

• Tap Edit at the top right.
• Now set values, or leave fields gray to clear them.
• Tap Done at the top right to save the changes to the selected books.

Warning: the Edit Multiple feature is a very useful and powerful features, but… remember what Uncle Ben said: With great power comes great responsibility!

IMPROVED: Edit Book screen

A new look for all edit boxes and a more compact layout, making it much easier to edit your book entries, without scrolling through long lists of fields.

• The cover image is now on its own tab, so the main tab starts with the most important edit fields at the top.
• Fields are now laid out side-by-side, making it easier to edit all fields without endless scrolling.
• More compact look and user interface for all text edit fields.
• More compact display and editing of multi-value pick list fields like Authors, Genres, Subjects and Tags.
• Date fields: enter year, month day manually or use calendar icon to use date setter popup.

NEW: Built-in Crop and Rotate tool for cover images

In the Edit Book screen the Cover is now on its own tab, with new Crop and Rotate tools for instant rotating and cropping of self-made cover photos or downloaded images.

IMPROVED: Folder Field selection screen

Yep, another update of this screen, to make it fully consistent with the Select Edit Fields screen.
It now includes a search box at the top for quickly finding the field you want, plus the ability to create your own Favorites (just tap the heart icons).

Here it is, version 6.0 of the CLZ Books mobile app!
In this major update, we finally bring you THE most requested feature: being able to Edit Multiple Books in one go. But there’s more, as we took this opportunity to completely re-design the Edit Book screen and to implement super useful Crop and Rotate tools for book cover images.

Here’s the full list of what’s new in version 6.0:

NEW: Edit Multiple Books in one go!

Finally make changes to multiple (or all) book entries in one go.
Here’s how:

• Tap and hold on a book in the list to enter Select Mode
• Now tap more books to select them.
• Tap the menu button on the bottom right and choose “Edit [x] Books”.
• In the screen tap appears, select which fields you want to edit.
  
  (Tips: use the search box to find fields, tap the star icons to set Favorite fields)

• Tap Edit at the top right.
• Now set values, or leave fields gray to clear them.
• Tap Done at the top right to save the changes to the selected books.

Warning: the Edit Multiple feature is a very useful and powerful features, but… remember what Uncle Ben said: With great power comes great responsibility!

IMPROVED: Edit Book screen

A new look for all edit boxes and a more compact layout, making it much easier to edit your book entries, without scrolling through long lists of fields.

• The cover image is now on its own tab, so the main tab starts with the most important edit fields at the top.
• Fields are now laid out side-by-side, making it easier to edit all fields without endless scrolling.
• More compact look and user interface for all text edit fields.
• More compact display and editing of multi-value pick list fields like Authors, Genres, Subjects and Tags.
• Date fields: enter year, month day manually or use calendar icon to use date setter popup.

NEW: Built-in Crop and Rotate tool for cover images

In the Edit Book screen the Cover is now on its own tab, with new Crop and Rotate tools for instant rotating and cropping of self-made cover photos or downloaded images.

IMPROVED: Folder Field selection screen

Yep, another update of this screen, to make it fully consistent with the Select Edit Fields screen.
It now includes a search box at the top for quickly finding the field you want, plus the ability to create your own Favorites (just tap the star icons).

Last week we implemented several small improvements to the Connect software, based on suggestions (and complaints) from you all, our loyal users:

Configurable Date Format for Edit screen

Two months ago, we introduced a Date Format setting to control how dates are displayed throughout the Connect software. But the date editors in the Edit screen still always used “yyyy-mm-dd” as the format. Which could be confusing to some users.

So in the Settings screen, under Editing, we have now introduced a new setting, specifically for controlling the order of the year, month and day boxes in the Edit screen:

New “Year” options for folders, colums and sorting

Some dates were already available as Year-only options for folders, columns and sorting (like Release Year, Publication Year, etc…), but we have now updated the available options to include ALL date fields as Year-only options, for example:

• Added Year
• Purchase Year
• Seen it Year
• Read it Year

Improved Auto-Capitalization feature

Small tweak for the Auto-Capitalization tools: it now correctly auto-caps letters that follow a parenthesis, bracket, square bracket, single quote or double quote.

More Totals in Statistics screens

The Statistics screen has been updated with more Totals at the top, e.g. for Purchase Price, Current Value.

Version 6.0 is coming up for all five CLZ mobile apps:
CLZ Books, CLZ Music, CLZ Movies, CLZ Comics and CLZ Games (probably in that order).

For “Vee Six” we decided to finally implement THE most commonly requested feature:

Editing Multiple entries in one go! (aka: Batch Editing)

At the same time, v6 will come with completely re-designed Edit screens. Check out some sneak preview screenshot below. More information about app-specific v6 features and improvements will follow later!

Finally: Edit Multiple entries in one go!

This has been the most common feature request for many years: How can I edit (or clear) the Grade/Location/Owner/etc… for many of my database entries in one go?

And in v6, it will finally be possible:

• Just select the entries you want to edit (using tap and hold), and choose Edit from the menu.
• Then select which fields you want to edit (or clear).
• Finally, set the values you want to set and click Done.

Some screenshots:

(These screenshots have been taken from the iOS edition of CLZ Comics, but the other 9 apps will look very similar):

Edit screen re-design

Also new in v6: completely re-designed Edit screens, to make them clearer, more compact and nicer looking.
No more long lists of fields, one per row. In the new screen, fields are placed side by side where possible, with the Cover on a separate tab. Resulting in a more compact screen, requiring less scrolling. Especially on tablet devices!

Some sneak preview screenshots:

(These screenshots have been taken from the iOS editions of CLZ Books and CLZ Music, but the other 8 apps will look very similar):

At customer support, we were regularly receiving questions about the Edit Multiple screen, so in today’s update we made several changes to make it clearer.

• The checkboxes (for unlocking fields) have been replaced by clearer “lock” icons. Click the lock icon to unlock a field for editing.
• Or, just click on a lock field and you will receive a popup asking you to unlock it.
• An extra notification at the top explaining the unlocking and clearing of fields.
• Save button now indicates the number of books that are being edited.
• Extra warning when saving “You are about to change data for 4 books. This can not be undone. Would you like to continue?”

Using “Edit Multiple”

Quick reminder on how to use Edit Multiple:
In the main list, use the checkboxes to select some books, and click “Edit” in the blue action bar that appears above the list.

Quick addition for the Edit Book screen today:
The AutoCap button is now also available for the Subtitle field!

Today’s version 5.5 brings two improvements to your CLZ Books app:

• A redesigned Select Folder Field screen
• A much faster Update from Core feature

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 redesigned Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Author, Publisher, Location) instantly accessible at the top.

Faster Update from Core

On large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your books one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every game.

So for this update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 books at a time, making it much much faster!

Remember: Update From Core can be used to update your local book entries with possible extra data from our Core online book database. To use this feature, tap and hold on a book in your list to select it, tap more to select more, then tap the menu icon on the bottom right and choose Update from Core.

Today’s version 5.5 brings two improvements to your CLZ Books app:

• A redesigned Select Folder Field screen
• A much faster Update from Core feature

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 redesigned Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Author, Publisher, Location) instantly accessible at the top.

Faster Update from Core

On large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your books one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every game.

So for this update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 books at a time, making it much much faster!

Remember: Update From Core can be used to update your local book entries with possible extra data from our Core online book database. To use this feature, tap and hold on a book in your list to select it, tap more to select more, then tap the menu icon on the bottom right and choose Update from Core.

Fixed:

• Field Defaults screen could crash
• Edit Screen: some fields would sort bad while editing them
• Add from Core: when adding a book that is already in on your wish list, it 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

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.

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.

Previously, the “Add to …” button in the Add screen let you choose between “Add to Collection” or “Add to Wishlist”. But as of today, you can now choose from ALL possible Collection Status option directly. For instance, this lets you add an item as “On Order” straight from the Add screen!

Now, the possible choices are:

• In Collection
• For Sale
• Wish List
• On Order
• Not In Collection

A big update for Book Connect again, in which we introduce many new settings for further customizing your software to your own liking.
And while we were at it, we updated the Settings screen with clearer grouping and naming of settings.

Here’s what’s new:

Auto Capitalization

This is a completely new feature, for automatically capitalizing your book titles.
Auto capping can be done:

• when adding books from Core. This is OFF by default as our Core delivers nicely capped book titles in general.
• as you type titles in the Edit and Add Manually screens, very useful when adding books manually
• by clicking the AutoCap (aA) button above the Title box in the Edit screen

The Settings screen lets you choose between 4 Auto Cap methods:

• First Letter of Each Word with Exceptions
• First letter only with exceptions
• UPPER CASE
• lower case

The Auto Cap Exceptions list comes pre-filled with a sensible list of common exceptions, but is completely user configurable.

Date Format

Choose how date formats are displayed throughout Connect.

Timezone

Choose your own timezone and all Date Added and Date Modified fields will be displayed according to that timezone. (previously these all showed in UTC time)

BTW: also new today: new column options Date/Time Added and Date/Time Modified, for showing the full added and modified timestamps.

Sorting

Two new options that control the sorting and how names and titles are displayed.

• When sorting, ignore sort titles: check this if you prefer to ignore all sort title when sorting and just have the software sort on the regular Title field.
• When sorting, ignore sort names for Authors, Narrators and Illustrators: check this if you prefer to ignore all sort names when sorting and just have the software sort on the display names.
• When displaying, show sort title: when sorting by title, showing the actual sort titles that it sorts on can make your list a bit “easier on the eye”.
• When displaying, show sort names for Authors, Narrators and Illustrators: showing the actual sort names that it sorts on can make your list a bit “easier on the eye”.

Audiobook length display

Control how audiobook lengths are displayed (in list, in the details panel, etc…). Choose from:

• HH:MM, e.g. “1:57”
• Minutes, e.g. “117min”

A very nice cosmetic update for your Connect software today: a new “Shelves View”!

Shelves View is a fourth view for your book list, similar to Cover View, but with your cover images standing on a nice shelves background. You can even choose between 6 different shelf styles using the Shelf Style selector:

• Wood Light
• Wood Dark
• Glass
• Metal
• Carbon
• White

Also new, for both Shelves View and Images View, as “Size Slider” to control the size of the images.

Toolbar tweaks

Because of the introduction of the new view, the Shelf Style selector and the Size Slider, we have also made several changes to the various Connect toolbars:

• A new “View” toolbar right above the list, with 4 buttons for switching between the 4 views (List, Card, Cover and Shelves), the Size Slider and the Style Selector (for Shelves) and finally the Sort Order button (on the far right).
• The new “View” toolbar replaces the “Filter” toolbar that was in that spot.
• The “Filter” toolbar now only appears when a filter is actually active, and now has a pale yellow background to make it super-clear that you are looking at a filtered list.
• The number of books indicator has been moved (back) to the center of the top toolbar.

Faster CLZ Cloud syncing!

We have made several structural changes to the CLZ Cloud syncing, making it much much faster than before, especially when syncing large amounts of entries up to the CLZ Cloud or down from the CLZ Cloud.

To enjoy the faster syncing, you need to use the actual Sync with CLZ Cloud screen.

(The Auto-Syncing in the background is also slightly faster now, but if you need to sync many entries up or down, please use the Sync with CLZ Cloud screen.)

New design for Sync with CLZ Cloud screen

While we were at it, we decided to do a quick make-over for the Sync screen, with a new look and layout and a direct link to your CLZ Cloud page online.

Fixes:

• Author name was not saved when adding a book via the unrecognized ISBN popup

Faster CLZ Cloud syncing!

We have made several structural changes to the CLZ Cloud syncing, making it much much faster than before, especially when syncing large amounts of entries up to the CLZ Cloud or down from the CLZ Cloud.

To enjoy the faster syncing, you need to use the actual Sync with CLZ Cloud screen.

(The Auto-Syncing in the background is also slightly faster now, but if you need to sync many entries up or down, please use the Sync with CLZ Cloud screen.)

New design for Sync with CLZ Cloud screen

While we were at it, we decided to do a quick make-over for the Sync screen, with a new look and layout and a direct link to your CLZ Cloud page online.

Fixed:

• Made the touch area for scrollbars a bit bigger (useful for quick scrolling)
• Added a “Clear” button in the search box in the Add Screen

It’s been a bit quiet with Connect updates in the past 2 months, as we have been preparing a *huge* update. BUT it is live now!

All settings are now saved server-side, in your CLZ Cloud

We have taken the advantage of the Connect web-based software to the next level, by storing all your settings on the server side, your CLZ Cloud (instead of in local browser cookies).
So any computer or device you log in to will automatically have the same folder option selected, the same columns selected for the list view, the same sort order, the same layout, etc..

Connect now even stores your Add screen’s barcode queue on the server side, so you scan barcode into the queue on one computer and process the queue later, from any other device.

All your existing settings will be automatically transfered to the server, the first time you login.

BTW: this change finally resolves the problem of losing all settings for users who have their browser configured to remove all cookies on exit.

Create your own Favorites for Columns and Sort Orders

While we were working on the settings, we figured this was a good time to add some more customizability to the Columns and Sort Order features. You can now create and save your own Column and Sort Order settings as Favorites, then easily switch between them.

To create and manage your Favorites, click the Column or Sort Order button and choose Manage Favorites:

Manage Column Favorites:

Manage Sorting Favorites:

An old feature from the Windows and macOS editions, that somehow never made it to Connect: Re-Assigning Index Values. But now it’s available in Connect too!

What are index values?

Connect automatically assigns and increments index numbers to items that you add to your collection. The Index value is assigned when you add an item to the database. The next item you add to your collection will have an index number that is incremented by 1.

Index numbers are only used once. When an item is deleted, the next added item will still increment on the highest index number present in your collection.

New: Re-Assign Index Values:

With the new “Re-Assign Index Values” tool, you can automatically assign new and consecutive index values to all your items, according to a sort order you select, e.g. by Title, Release Year or your own Purchase Date.

To begin, click the menu top left and select “Re-Assign Index Values”. Now choose your desired Sort Order.

Please note that this action can not be undone!

In this update we introduce a new quick-search for your folders, sorting your folders by the counters, and more stable cloud syncing through our brand-new dedicated Sync-server.

Quick-search your folders

Grouping in folders is a powerful way to browse and filter your collection. Just group by Author, or Publisher, etc… tap a folder and the list will give you all books for the selected Author or Publisher.

However, if your collection spans thousands of books, that “tap a folder” part is sometimes easier said than done. It may require lots of scrolling in the folder list.

But not anymore! This version introduces a new search box right above the folder list, that lets you instantly search/filter the folder list as you type! Just typing a few letters is often enough to bring the folder you are looking for into view:

Sort folders by count

By default, the folders are sorted alphabetically. But as of today, there is another option: sort your folders by the counter, that is by the number of books contained.

Sorting by the counters is a nice way to find the most popular Authors, Publishers, Genres, Subjects, etc..

Switch between the Alphabetical and By Count sorting using the sort toggle at the top:

Improved barcode scanning

We have improved the scan engine and gave it a larger “scan area”. This should help scan barcodes faster and easier.

Now uses our brand-new CLZ Cloud Sync-server

Previously one big server was handling the Connect website, the CLZ Cloud website AND the CLZ Cloud syncing from the desktop programs and the mobile apps.
But this week we have set up a brand-new dedicated Sync-server to handle just the CLZ Cloud syncing.

In today’s update, CLZ Books has been updated to sync through this new server, which should result in faster syncing and a more stable syncing experience during high load times (weekends).

In this update we introduce a new quick-search for your folders, sorting your folders by the counters, and more stable cloud syncing through our brand-new dedicated Sync-server.

Quick-search your folders

Grouping in folders is a powerful way to browse and filter your collection. Just group by Author, or Publisher, etc… tap a folder and the list will give you all books for the selected Author or Publisher.

However, if your collection spans thousands of books, that “tap a folder” part is sometimes easier said than done. It may require lots of scrolling in the folder list.

But not anymore! This version introduces a new search box right above the folder list, that lets you instantly search/filter the folder list as you type! Just typing a few letters is often enough to bring the folder you are looking for into view:

Sort folders by count

By default, the folders are sorted alphabetically. But as of today, there is another option: sort your folders by the counter, that is by the number of books contained.

Sorting by the counters is a nice way to find the most popular Authors, Publishers, Genres, Subjects, etc..

Switch between the Alphabetical and By Count sorting using the sort toggle at the top:

Improved barcode scanning

We have improved the scan engine and gave it a larger “scan area”. This should help scan barcodes faster and easier.

Now uses our brand-new CLZ Cloud Sync-server

Previously one big server was handling the Connect website, the CLZ Cloud website AND the CLZ Cloud syncing from the desktop programs and the mobile apps.
But this week we have set up a brand-new dedicated Sync-server to handle just the CLZ Cloud syncing.

In today’s update, CLZ Books has been updated to sync through this new server, which should result in faster syncing and a more stable syncing experience during high load times (weekends).

Fixed:

• Field Defaults: It wasn’t possible to set the rating field back to zero.
• Manage Pick Lists: Merging list items caused too many sync changes.

WebP is a new image format, developed by Google, that is producing smaller images compared to JPG and PNG, while preserving image quality. All modern browsers fully support the new WebP format so many websites are now using WebP for a faster browsing experience, consuming less bandwidth.

Of course, our Connect web-based software and the free CLZ Cloud viewer sites are quite heavy on cover images, especially in the Image and Card Views. So we figured switching to WebP could produce a nice boost in performance!

So today, we switched over and are now delivering all cover images and backdrops in WebP format, on all browsers that support it (older browsers still get JPG images).

You will find that your Image View and Cards View will load faster now. The difference is especially noticeable on slower internet connections and mobile devices (if you have a very fast internet connection, the difference will be minimal).

Noticeable on all connection types is the faster loading of the details panel after selecting a different item in your list. Because of the huge difference in the backdrop image sizes, viewing item details is now a lot snappier.

Enjoy!