What's new in CLZ Comics? (page 12)

A big update for your CLZ app today. Instead of bringing one big new feature, we decided to work on multiple areas that could be improved, all of them based on the feedback we received from you all. Thanks for that!

Add Comics by Series: New “Select All” checkbox

By popular demand: in the Add Comics screen, on the By Series tab right above the Issue List, we have added an new “Select All” checkbox, for easily selecting ALL issues in the series!

Collection Status filter

The 2nd button from the top right (next to the search button) is the Collection Status filter. Previously, it allowed you to filter by All, Collection or Wish List, but with this update, we added all collection status option there as filters, including On order and For Sale.

Also, the button will now be highlighted in yellow when a filter is active, that is, when it is set to anything other than “All”.

Re-designed toolbars at the top

The toolbars at the top have been re-designed, mainly to make the interactive elements stand out more as actual “buttons”.

(Especially the folder icon on the left was something that was often overlooked as something you could tap on. Hopefully this re-design will help to let more users find the most powerful feature of the app 🙂 )

New sort and display options in Settings

For Series:

• Ignore Series Sort Names when sorting by Series
• Show Series Sort Names instead of Series Display Name

For Creators:

• Ignore Sort Names when sorting by Creators
• Show Sort Names instead of display names for Creators

Improved Statistics screen

The Statistics screen has been updated with:

• More database totals at the top (signed comics, key comics, purchase price)
• More charts (by Publisher, by Grade, by Year, by Creator, by Character, Purchase Price by Series)
• A new: “tap to show all” option to enlarge charts and see ALL entries

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 Comic 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

Today we are responding to a request that we have been hearing from many years:

Is there any way I can find which comics I am MISSING for my series

Definitely not an easy feature to implement, because the first question immediately is “what about variants?”. If you own issue 13A, do you regard issue 13B, 13C and 13D as missing or not?

So our UI/US designers AJ and I (Alwin) sat down to design a flexible “Missing Comics” screen that gives you full flexibility to conjure up the missing comics list you are looking for.

Based on our ideas, web-developer Sven created a super-fast search engine on our servers, that can instantly return issue number lists for any series. Still not sure how he made it this fast, but you’ll definitely love the speed of this tool.

Then after that, our mobile developers Pim and Bernard created the new Missing Comics tool that you can now find in the menu of version 6.2. Alternatively, open it from the new “Find missing comics” link under the Have/Want list at the top of your issue list.

Use the pencil icon at the top left to change settings, that is:

• Show or Hide missing variants.
• Switch between a compact list and a verbose list. (the compact view lists missing comics in “ranges”.)
• Order the missing issue lists in Ascending or Descending order.

Use the toggle on the top right to sort the series list alphabetically or by the number of comics that are missing.

New “Find Missing Comics” link in the Collection / Wish List summary panel:

Note: Missing Comics is premium online service, which requires a subscription!

Today we are responding to a request that we have been hearing from many years:

Is there any way I can find which comics I am MISSING for my series

Definitely not an easy feature to implement, because the first question immediately is “what about variants?”. If you own issue 13A, do you regard issue 13B, 13C and 13D as missing or not?

So our UI/US designers AJ and I (Alwin) sat down to design a flexible “Missing Comics” screen that gives you full flexibility to conjure up the missing comics list you are looking for.

Based on our ideas, web-developer Sven created a super-fast search engine on our servers, that can instantly return issue number lists for any series. Still not sure how he made it this fast, but you’ll definitely love the speed of this tool.

Then after that, our mobile developers Pim and Bernard created the new Missing Comics tool that you can now find in the menu of version 6.2. Alternatively, open it from the new “Find missing comics” link under the Have/Want list at the top of your issue list.

Use the pencil icon at the top left to change settings, that is:

• Show or Hide missing variants.
• Switch between a compact list and a verbose list. (the compact view lists missing comics in “ranges”.)
• Order the missing issue lists in Ascending or Descending order.

Use the toggle on the top right to sort the series list alphabetically or by the number of comics that are missing.

New “Find Missing Comics” link in the Collection / Wish List summary panel:

Note: Missing Comics is premium online service, which requires a subscription!

Fixed:

• Add Screen: Scrolling through results could be slow
• Edit Multiple: Fixed a rare crash
• Manage Pick List: a pick list item could appear twice when merging

Fixed:

• Crash when adding comics on certain tablet devices

Another nice update for your Comic Connect software.

Updated Pre-fill screen that pops up when adding comics

When adding a comic to your database using the Add Comics screen, it always shows the Quick-Fill popup, for quickly pre-filling some fields for the added comics.

This pop-up has been renamed to “Pre-fill comic details”, now has a new layout and contains 4 extra fields you can pre-fill!

Fields available in the Pre-fill screen:

• Grade
• Quantity
• Grading Company (New!)
• Raw / Slabbed (New!)
• Storage Box
• Owner (New!)
• Purchase Date
• Purchase Store
• Purchase Price
• Tags (New!)

Fixed:

• “Read it” and Reading Date would be set even if they were switched off in Field Defaults
• Pre-fill: “Not graded” option didn’t work for the Grade field
• Purchase Date would always be set to “today

Today we are responding to request that we have been hearing from many years:

Is there any way I can find which comics I am MISSING for my series

Definitely not an easy feature to implement, because the first question immediately is “what about variants?”. If you own issue 13A, do you regard issue 13B, 13C and 13D as missing or not?

So our UI/US designed AJ and I (Alwin) sat down to design a flexible “Missing Comics” screen that gives you full flexibility to conjure up the missing comics list you are looking for.

Based on our ideas, web-developer Sven created a super-fast search engine on our servers, that can instantly return issue number lists for any series. Still not sure how he made it this fast, but you’ll definitely love the speed of this too.

Then after that, Sven created the new Missing Comics tool that you can now find in the Tools menu of version 21. Alternatively, open it from the “Find missing comics” link next to you Have list at the top of your issue list.

Use the checkboxes and sort toggle at the top to:

• Show or Hide missing variants.
• Switch between a compact list and a verbose list. (the compact view lists missing comics in “ranges”.)
• Order the missing issue lists in Ascending or Descending order.

New “Find Missing Comics” link in the Collection / Wish List summary panel:

Use the button on the bottom right to download a nice PDF file that you can print off, for taking with you to the store or to a show:

Another big update for your CLZ Comics app, version 6.1!
This time, we added a new Pre-fill screen, that will save you lots of time.

New Pre-fill screen that pops up when adding comics

When adding comics to your app from the Add Comics screen, the app will now pop-up a new screen called “Pre-fill comic details, letting you set various fields right then and there.

Fields available in the Pre-fill screen:

• Grade
• Quantity
• Grading Company
• Raw/Slabbed
• Storage Box
• Owner
• Purchase Date
• Purchase Store
• Purchase Price (or, auto-fill with Cover Price)
• Tags

No more need to edit your added comics afterwards!

New look and layout of Field Defaults screen

A small cosmetic change to the Field Defaults screen, to give it the same look and feel as the new Edit screens.

Another big update for your CLZ Comics app, version 6.1!
This time, we added a new Pre-fill screen, that will save you lots of time.

New Pre-fill screen that pops up when adding comics

When adding comics to your app from the Add Comics screen, the app will now pop-up a new screen called “Pre-fill comic details, letting you set various fields right then and there.

Fields available in the Pre-fill screen:

• Grade
• Quantity
• Grading Company
• Raw/Slabbed
• Storage Box
• Owner
• Purchase Date
• Purchase Store
• Purchase Price (or, auto-fill with Cover Price)
• Tags

No more need to edit your added comics afterwards!

New look and layout of Field Defaults screen

A small cosmetic change to the Field Defaults screen, to give it the same look and feel as the new Edit screens.

Tweaks to Updated Values report

We were not entirely happy with the new Update Values report yet, so here’s a small tweak to the screen to make the actual value *changes* stand out more:

Fixed:

• Currency fields could contain 0.00 when they shouldn’t
• Edit Screen: You can now directly edit existing series title / sort title again
• Field Defaults would override information coming from Core

Tweaks to Updated Values report

We were not entirely happy with the new Update Values report yet, so here’s a small tweak to the screen to make the actual value *changes* stand out more:

Fixed:

• Toolbar above the Series folder could disappear on smaller screens
• Edit Screen: You can now directly edit existing series title / sort title again
• Field Defaults would override information coming from Core

Fixed:

• Edit Screen: Covers: Remove/Crop button could be missing in the edit screen
• Update value report screen: sorting was off
• Edit Multiple: Publisher and Story Arc fields weren’t working

Fixed:

• Update Values report only showed a maximum of 100 updated values

Here it is, version 6.0 of the CLZ Comics mobile app!

With this major update, we are responding to two of the most common questions:

• “How can I edit multiple comics in one go?”
• “After updating values, how can I see which comics have been updated?”

But there’s much more!
Here’s the full list of what’s new in version 6.0:

New “Update Values” report

Since we introduced the Update Values from GoCollect feature, one of the most common questions we received at customer support has been:

After I update the values for my comics, is there any way I can see which comics have been updated?

So, after one year of having to say “sorry, no that is not possible”, we figured, let’s make it possible.

And of course, we went way beyond just showing which comics have been updated. As of today, after you run Update Values, you will get a nice “Updated Values” report, showing you:

• which comics have been updated
• their previous values and the new values
• the value change, in green when increased, in red when decreased
• total value changes for the updated comics and for your entire collection

New: Add Comics by Series AND Issue Number

In the Add Comics screen, when searching for a comic “By Series Title”, you are sometimes getting so many series results, that it can be hard to find the exact comic you have in your hands. You may find yourself expanding series after series, to find the issue you need.

But not anymore, as today’s update will make this a lot easier: Just use the new “Add Issue” tab in the Add Comics screen to search by Series title AND Issue number in one go.
E.g. search for “iron man 17” and it will instantly show you a simple flat list of all issues 17 of matching Iron Man series.

Note that the list of matches will automatically be a lot shorter, because the results will only include the series that actually have the issue number you are looking. For example, search for “action comics 214” and it will instantly give you the exact comic you are looking for:

NEW: Edit Multiple Comics in one go!

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

• Tap and hold on a comic in the list to enter Select Mode
• Now tap more comics to select them.
• Tap the menu button on the bottom right and choose “Edit [x] Comics”.
• In the screen that 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 comic.

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

IMPROVED: Edit Comic screen

A new look for all edit boxes and a more compact layout, making it much easier to edit your comic 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 Genres 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 Comic 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.

Folder Field selection screen

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).

Here it is, version 6.0 of the CLZ Comics mobile app!

With this major update, we are responding to two of the most common questions:

• “How can I edit multiple comics in one go?”
• “After updating values, how can I see which comics have been updated?”

But there’s much more!
Here’s the full list of what’s new in version 6.0:

New “Update Values” report

Since we introduced the Update Values from GoCollect feature, one of the most common questions we received at customer support has been:

After I update the comic values, is there any way I can see which comics have been updated?

So, after one year of having to say “sorry, no that is not possible”, we figured, let’s make it possible.

And of course, we went way beyond just showing which comics have been updated. As of today, after you run Update Values, you will get a nice “Updated Values” report, showing you:

• which comics have been updated
• their previous values and the new values
• the value change, in green when increased, in red when decreased
• total value changes for the updated comics and for your entire collection

New: Add Comics by Series AND Issue Number

In the Add Comics screen, when searching for a comic “By Series Title”, you are sometimes getting so many series results, that it can be hard to find the exact comic you have in your hands. You may find yourself expanding series after series, to find the issue you need.

But not anymore, as today’s update will make this a lot easier: Just use the new “Add Issue” tab in the Add Comics screen to search by Series title AND Issue number in one go.
E.g. search for “iron man 17” and it will instantly show you a simple flat list of all issues 17 of matching Iron Man series.

Note that the list of matches will automatically be a lot shorter, because the results will only include the series that actually have the issue number you are looking. For example, search for “action comics 214” and it will instantly give you the exact comic you are looking for:

NEW: Edit Multiple Comics in one go!

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

• Tap and hold on a comic in the list to enter Select Mode
• Now tap more comics to select them.
• Tap the menu button on the bottom right and choose “Edit [x] Comics”.
• In the screen that 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 comic.

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

IMPROVED: Edit Comic screen

A new look for all edit boxes and a more compact layout, making it much easier to edit your comic 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 Genres 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 Comic 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.

Folder Field selection screen

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).

In the Add Comics screen, when searching for a comic “By Series Title”, you are sometimes getting so many series results, that it can be hard to find the exact comic you have in your hands. You may find yourself expanding series after series, to find the issue you need.

But not anymore, as today’s update will make this a lot easier: Just use the new “Add Issue” tab in the Add Comics screen to search by Series title AND Issue number in one go.
E.g. search for “iron man 17” and it will instantly show you a simple flat list of all issues 17 of matching Iron Man series.

Note that the list of matches will automatically be a lot shorter, because the results will only include the series that actually have the issue number you are looking. For example, search for “action comics 214” and it will instantly give you the exact comic you are looking for:

Since we introduced the Update Values from Go Collect feature, one of the most common questions we received at customer support has been:

After I update the values for my comics, is there any way I can see which comics have been updated?

So, after one year of having to say “sorry, no that is not possible”, we figured, let’s make it possible.

And of course, we went way beyond just showing which comics have been updated. As of today, after you run Update Values, you will get a nice “Updated Values” report, showing you:

• which comics have been updated
• their previous values and the new values
• the value change, in green when increased, in red when decreased
• links to GoCollect to see further historic values
• total value changes for the updated comics and for your entire collection

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):

For most new comics you purchase every week, you are probably paying cover price. So we figured, why not make it a bit easier for you and let you auto-fill the Purchase Price field with the Cover Price?

You can now do so by enabling the “Auto-Fill with Cover Price” setting in the Field Defaults screen:

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 comics that are being edited.
• Extra warning when saving “You are about to change data for 4 comics. This can not be undone. Would you like to continue?”

Using “Edit Multiple”

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

Fixed:

• Add by barcode: for some scanned barcodes, the Add button did not appear.