What's new in CLZ Books? (page 7)
You can now quickly share your entire collection or one single item in your collection with anyone using the Share button at the top of your collection. You can share your collection or single item on Facebook, Twitter, via email or just copy a direct link using the Share icon top right.
Go to your cloud page, login at the top right, and use the Share icon at the top to begin:
Share entire collection
For your entire collection, make sure you’re on your Cloud / Connect page with all your items in view and then click the Share icon top right:
Share one single item
For one single item, click the item in your collection and then click the Share button at the top:
This is a new way to show your collection list to specific people, without making it Public. Just set your Cloud Visibility to Private, hiding it from public view, then generate a secret Private Cloud Sharing link. Send this link to your friends and only they will be able to see your collection. Best of both worlds!
To change our Cloud Visibility, go to your cloud page, login at the top right, then choose Settings from the “wrench” icon menu.
Previously, the search feature in the cloud viewer took you to a separate page showing the search results.
Now, the search is fully integrated into the regular collection viewer. Which means that you can now search, then further drill down using folders and/or the alphabet bar. Super handy, especially for large collections.
New:
- Add Books from CLZ Core: New skinned preview templates.
- After adding/editing a book, the app will now always find and show your last added book in your main screen.
- If you log in to your CLZ Account on a new or empty device, the app will now ask you if you wish to download your books from CLZ Cloud.
- Added skinning to Sign up/Log in/In App Purchase screens.
Fixed:
- After each CLZ Cloud sync the “Quick Search” and “Collection Status Filter” was cleared.
- When a custom cover was downloaded via CLZ Cloud syncing, the thumbnail in the list wasn’t immediately updated.
- When a book was removed, the list would scroll back to the top.
- Various skinning, layout and color fixes.
Another productive week here for our Connect pages! Our web developer Joe has finished work on 2 improvements for your Connect page:
New layouts in Edit Screen
We recently took a look at our Edit Screen and figured it was time to change some fields around as we thought they weren’t all logically placed. So for all 5 Connect titles we’ve now changed the layout and placements of your fields in the Edit Screen. We also consolidated all “Cover” tabs in the edit screens so they work the same in all 5 Connect titles.
New: Duplicate feature
You can now duplicate an item in your database. To do this, click on an item in your database to view its details, then at the top click on “Duplicate”.
The new duplicated item will be an exact duplicate of the previous item, but it will be unlinked. You can Link the duplicated item with the “Link” button at the top of the details page.
Add by Barcode: Now directly connect to your CLZ Barry barcode scanning app!
We’d love to see more users enjoy the fun and ease of adding items to their database by scanning barcodes with their phone or tablet. So we also decided a couple of weeks ago to make our CLZ Barry app FREE (previously US $10).
New: Directly connect to CLZ Barry from Connect
Previously you needed a special program to connect and send barcodes to your computer, but today we added a direct connection to CLZ Barry on all “Add by Barcode” pages on Connect, which means you can directly connect to any mobile device running the barcode scanning app “CLZ Barry” and scan barcodes straight into your Add by Barcode page on Connect!
Reminder: What is CLZ Barry ?
CLZ Barry is the Collectorz.com barcode scanner app. It lets you:
- Scan barcodes with your mobile device’s camera.
- Instantly send the barcodes (the 12 or 13-digit numbers) to the Add page on Connect.
How to get started with CLZ Barry
- Open the App Store or Play Store on your device,
then search for “CLZ BARRY” and download the app. - Follow the Getting Started Guide to set up and start scanning.
Getting Started for iOS / Getting Started for Android
Changed:
- Made some improvements to the barcode scanner
Fixed:
- Manual focus for barcode scanning
- Crash in the add auto screen when adding a mix of new books and books on wish list by barcode
- Crash in the pick cover option in the edit screen
Improvements to “Selection Mode”
You can now enter selection mode and use the “Select All” button top left to select all items in a list, or use “Shift clicking” to select a bunch of items in one go (hold the Shift button on your keyboard and click a couple of items to select/deselect them).
Use these selection mode improvements to select a subset of your database and quickly export them to PDF for instance!
New “None” folder added
We added a new “None” folder to your folder group view. The “None” folder will display when the field you’re folder grouping on is empty for that item.
Example: if you folder on “Genres” but you have one item where the Genre is not filled in, that specific item will appear in your “None” folder!
Print to PDF: Field Names on every page
We added a new checkbox in the settings for Print to PDF to include the field names column header on every single page.
New statistics added
We added some more collection statistics to the statistic screen. In your Connect page, click the “wrench” icon top right and then “Statistics” to check them out!
At the moment our entire web-team, 3 developers, is working full-time on our Connect editions. And it shows: lot of improvements and small tweaks are being released in rapid succession.
An overview of last week’s updates, now live in your Connect account:
Faster editing
This is a big one, as it makes editing your entries in Connect a lot quicker (and less annoying!).
Previously, after editing an entry, the entire list refreshed which A. was slow and B. caused you to lose your place in the list.
Now, the list does not refresh anymore. After an edit action, the edited item is simply updated with the new field values. Which is super quick and leaves you right where you were before you opened the Edit screen.
NOTE: this change has one implication: If your edit action would cause the item to be sorted in a different place in the list, or even to be moved to a different folder, that will not happen immediately. A simple manual refresh is all it takes in that case.
Updated Statistics screen
We re-wrote the Statistics screen using different charting tools, which makes them look and animate nicer AND solves several browser-specific problems.
Print to PDF enhancements
The new Print to PDF feature can now be used on a selection of items. So just go to Select mode, select some items, then choose Print to PDF in the toolbar top right.
Also, we have added a Margin setting, that lets you control the width of the margins of the generated PDF output.
More column and sort fields
We are regularly receiving requests for more fields to be available as column and sort fields. If technically feasible, we are adding these as we go. Some recent additions:
- Comics: Release Date and Cover Price are now available as column fields.
- Comics: Read It is now available in the Field Defaults settings.
- Movies: Director and Format are now sortable fields.
- Movies: Title Sort is now available as an Export field.
- Games: Genre is now available as a sort field.
This update to the CLZ Books app for Android brings user interface improvements to the Add Books screen:
- All panels are now resizable (list, details, camera)
- When adding a book that is already on your wish list, the app now lets you change its status to “In Collection”.
- Adding By ISBN barcode:
- Camera scanner is now integrated in Add screen, not a separate screen
- Tap the keyboard icon in the camera panel to enter an ISBN manually
- ISBN Barcode queue is now remembered between sessions
- Press and hold to delete an ISBN barcode from the queue
- Adding By Author/Title:
- Book not found? Easy add it manually using the special entry in the results list
New in the CLZ Cloud viewer and Book Connect: a Print to PDF feature!
Generate a PDF file from your book list, ideal for printing.
New in 4.5.2:
- New Details View templates which are easier on the eye:
- Clear Light template
- Clear Dark template
- Changed layout in some templates (repositioned “Subtitle” to make more room for “Title”).
Fixed:
- The last book in a list could not be selected.
- Covers were not updated in the main list after editing a book.
- Login now does a receipt check.
- “Change Template” button moved to right sidebar in the main screen.
- Better thumbnail layout in Landscape Mode.
- After closing the add books automatically screen, it now selects the latest added book.
- After syncing “collection status” no longer reverts to “all”.
- Improved “tap” area of hamburger menu so you can back out of a folder more easily.
A huge v4.5 update for the CLZ Books app is now available.
And prepare to be shocked 🙂 (in a good way, don’t worry):
The app looks completely different now, with a cleaner brighter look and an improved user interface.
What’s new in CLZ Books 4.5 for iOS?
- A completely new look, that is cleaner and brighter.
- The choice between two skins/themes: Light & Dark.
- No bottom toolbar means more screen space for your book collection.
- Big floating blue ‘+’ button on bottom right for adding new books.
- Access all other features and tools from ‘hamburger’ menu top left.
- Access all view settings from menu on top right.
- Quickly switch between All / In Collection / Wish List at the top.
How to update your CLZ Books app to version 4.5:
- On your device, open the App Store app.
- On the bottom, switch to the Updates tab.
- Find the CLZ Books entry and tap “UPDATE” on the right.
Do you like the new look?
Then please let the world know by posting a nice review in the App Store!
Whilst we make daily backups for you on our own servers, you can now create your own backup of your Connect database and download it to your computer!
If you ever make a big mistake and lose valuable data, you can upload a previously downloaded backup file and restore it to your current database.
Import any Text or .CSV file into your collection
You can now import any text file (.txt) or comma separated value file (.csv) into your collection on Connect using the new import page in your Connect account.
With this new import tool you are able to quickly import a list of books from for instance an existing collection you may have in a spreadsheet or different software. All you have to do is export those books from your other software to a text or CSV file and follow the steps on the new Import page in your Connect account.
New:
- Redesigned missing ISBN screen with additional fields
Fixed:
- Edit buttons missing for manage pick list fields in the edit screen
An important v4.3.9 update for your CLZ Books Android app is now available.
This update introduces an easier way to deal with “Unrecognized ISBNs”.
A new screen that not only helps you to add the book to your database anyway, but also helps your fellow CLZ Books users by instantly adding the missing ISBN to the CLZ Core central online book database.
(this feature was introduced for our Windows, Mac and iOS versions earlier, and in the meantime, people have used this new tool to add over 22 thousand new books to our Core!)
- In the Add screen, when a scanned ISBN is not recognized, a new “Unrecognized ISBN” screen will appear.
- In this screen, just enter the Author, Title, Publisher and Year, then click Add Book.
- This will:
- Add the book to your own database, with the information you filled in.
- Add the book to our Core central online book database.
The result: for the next user who searches for this particular ISBN, it will be recognized 🙂
New:
- Edit screen with tabs (main details/personal details)
- Added folder options: country, store
- Main list
- Scroll position now remembered after editing/removing a book
- Now updates live after editing a book
- Added a ‘show all’ folder item in empty folders on tablet devices
- Added collection status folders
Fixed:
- Fixed list view section headers stopping at X
- Crash in the in-app-purchase screen
- App freezing when entering a 20 character password in the login screen
- Manage Pick Lists:
- Wrong sorting of numeric values
- Crash when adding an empty item
- Issue renaming an item with 1 letter only
- Fixed database limit message appearing in the old desktop sync when the limit was between 100 and unlimited
Do you already have a list of your movies, books, cds, comics or games? E.g. entered in a spread-sheet program, or created using a different cataloging tool, then exported to CSV?
Cool, you can now easily get that list into your Collectorz.com program (desktop, mobile or Connect). Just use our new flexible import tool to import your existing list into the CLZ Cloud. This will make your list instantly available in Connect. Or sync to the mobile app or desktop software using the CLZ Cloud syncing.
As most of you know, at Collectorz.com we take Customer Support very seriously. We’re always here to answer your questions or to help with any problems you may have encountered with our cataloging tools.
To further streamline CLZ Support, Sven, one of our web-developers, has created a new Collectorz.com Help Center, at Help.CLZ.com
New:
Fixed:
v4.3.1: Redesigned Add Automatically screen and new “Missing ISBN” screen
A huge v4.3 update for your CLZ Books mobile app for iOS is now available.
In this update, we completely re-designed the Add Book screen, to make it clearer, easier-to-use and to help you add books more efficiently.
New: Re-designed Add Books screen
- Switch between By Author/Title and By ISBN modes using tabs at the top
(Add Manually is now a separate screen, under Tools menu) - All panels are now resizable (list, details, camera)
- Add button is now at bottom right (blue circle with “+” icon)
- Adding By ISBN:
- Camera scanner is now integrated in Add screen, not a separate screen
- Tap the keyboard icon in the camera panel to enter an ISBN manually
- Delete ISBN from queue by swiping from right to left
- ISBN queue is now remembered between sessions
New: Easily add books that come up as “Unrecognized ISBN”:
- When an ISBN is not recognized, a new “Unrecognized ISBN” screen will appear.
- In this screen, just type the Author and the Title, then click Add Book.
- This will:
- Instantly add the ISBN/Author/Title entry to our Core online book database.
- Add the book to your own database with ISBN, Author and Title filled in AND linked to the new Core entry.
In other words, this new screen not only helps you in adding unrecognized books, but it also helps your fellow CLZ Books users by adding the missing ISBN to the CLZ Core.
Big launch this week, our new Collectorz.com Shop is live at Shop.CLZ.com !
Bernard, Sven, AJ and I (Alwin) have been working on this for quite a while, doing many iterations, to make the new shop super-clear and easy to navigate, even on mobile devices.
This new shop replaces both the shop/buy pages of the collectorz.com website and the shop of the My.CLZ.com website. Both websites now link to the new Shop.CLZ.com.
- Added Folder options for Country and store
- CLZ Cloud Sync button now indicates “out of sync” status using red exclamation mark
- App now automatically restores the Unlock Full App in-app purchase
- Fixed hardware keyboard enter not working in tablet search field
- Fixed screen rotation not working on phones
“Export to Text”, a feature previously only available to Connect subscribers, has now also been added to the CLZ Cloud viewer.
We figured that exporting to a text file, e.g. a CSV for Excel, should be available to any user, whether they own Connect, the desktop software or a CLZ mobile app.
You can find the Export to Text feature by visiting your own collection in the CLZ Cloud viewer, clicking the little “wrench” icon top right, then selecting Export.
Enjoy!