What's new in CLZ Comics? (page 7)

Instead of working on new features, we decided to take a few weeks to look at existing screens and functionality and see where things could be improved, of course all based on your feedback.

Today’s update brings you the first user interface improvements we implemented (more coming up!):

Easier to find Edit and Remove buttons on comic details screen (phone only)

Easier editing of pick list fields, especially multi-value fields

• Selected/checked values are now always at the top
• For multi-value fields (like Genre), check/uncheck multiple values in one go!
• Easier to find big button at the top for adding NEW values..

Complete Re-design of Manage Pick List screen

• Easier to find big button at the top for adding NEW values.
• Remove Unused and Merge action have now been moved to action (…) button top right.
• Easier to use Merge mode.

Add by barcode: New Clear Queue button and new “Scanning tips” popup

Other tweaks:

• Re-introduced a “sync changes pending” icon to the “Sync with CLZ Cloud” menu item

Last week, we released CLZ Comics 5.0, of which the most popular new feature was the new automatic comic values tool.

After the release, we immediately started getting questions from many users “Okay, I see the values now, but where can I see the TOTAL value of my collection”?

Of course, we were way ahead of you! Planned for inclusion in the v5.0 release was a cool new Statistics screen, with charts, totals, everything. Sadly, we had to skip this feature because of time constraints, as we really wanted to make our planned v5 deadline.

However, 10 days later, the Stats screen has been finished now, waiting for you in version 5.0.4!

New Statistics screen

A cool “infographic” style screen showing totals and statistics about your comic collection. Find your biggest series, your most recent purchases, your most valuable comics and the value by series and of course, the total value.

Last week, we released CLZ Comics 5.0, of which the most popular new feature was the new automatic comic values tool.

After the release, we immediately started getting questions from many users “Okay, I see the values now, but where can I see the TOTAL value of my collection”?

Of course, we were way ahead of you! Planned for inclusion in the v5.0 release was a cool new Statistics screen, with charts, totals, everything. Sadly, we had to skip this feature because of time constraints, as we really wanted to make our planned v5 deadline.

However, 10 days later, the Stats screen has been finished now, waiting for you in version 5.0.4!

New Statistics screen

A cool “infographic” style screen showing totals and statistics about your comic collection. Find your biggest series, your most recent purchases, your most valuable comics, the value by series and of course, the total value of your collection.

Fixed:

• Purchase store could display twice in the details template

It’s finally here, CLZ Comics 5.0. Here’s what’s new in v5:

• CLZ Comics is now a subscription app
  Of course, all existing users have been “grandfathered” into a life-time app unlock.
• Automatic “slabbed & graded” values from GoCollect
  Find the most valuable comics in your collection (premium online service, so requires a subscription).
• Lots of new data fields
  Grade, Grading Company, Grader Notes, Slabbed vs Raw, Signed By, Is Key Comic, Key Reason, Plot, Nr of Pages, Genres, Country and Language.
• Now supports and syncs multiple collections
  Create and sync multiple “sub collections” within your database.
• Automatic cloud-syncing of your own “custom” images
  No more need to manually force “Upload Image to CLZ Cloud”.
• Many tweaks to the menu and overall UI
  Logo in top bar, clearer Edit/Remove buttons, new Maintenance sub-menu, etc..

Read more

It’s finally here, CLZ Comics 5.0. Here’s what’s new in v5:

• CLZ Comics is now a subscription app
  Of course, all existing users have been “grandfathered” into a life-time app unlock.
• Automatic “slabbed & graded” values from GoCollect
  Find the most valuable comics in your collection (premium online service, so requires a subscription).
• Lots of new data fields
  Grade, Grading Company, Grader Notes, Slabbed vs Raw, Signed By, Is Key Comic, Key Reason, Plot, Nr of Pages, Genres, Country and Language.
• Now supports and syncs multiple collections
  Create and sync multiple “sub collections” within your database.
• Automatic cloud-syncing of your own “custom” images
  No more need to manually force “Upload Image to CLZ Cloud”.
• Many tweaks to the menu and overall UI
  Logo in top bar, clearer Edit/Remove buttons, new Maintenance sub-menu, etc..

Read more

Today, a subtle addition to your Comic Connect software, but one that can save you a lot of time if you’re always adding your comics by barcode:

A new “Add [..] to Collection” button under the add queue, that lets you add all scanned comics in one go. No more need to click the little “+” buttons for each entry.

Yes, it is finally happening! After being a daily feature request for many years, our comic database tools are finally going to deliver comic values, thanks to our new collaboration with the popular GoCollect.com comic book price guide.
And the cloud-based Comic Connect software is the first to get this cool new feature!

New in today’s Comic Connect update:

• Get comic values from Core, powered by GoCollect.com
  Find out which are the most valuable comics in your collection. Just set a Grade for your comics, then Update Values from GoCollect based on that grade.
  Finally, view Value Stats in the updated Statistics screens.
• Lots of new editable fields:
  Many new value related fields are now available. Grade, Slabbed vs Raw, Grading Company, Grader Notes, Signed By, Is Key Comic (yes/no) and Key Reason.
  Other new fields: Back Cover, Plot, Nr of Pages, Genres, Country and Language.

Read more

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

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 collection!

New: Find Duplicate Comics

Open the menu top left and select Find Duplicates to begin.

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

• Series & Issue
• Series, Issue & Extension
• UPC (Barcode)
• Index

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”, it will remove all duplicate entries and will only keep 1 single entry (the oldest one) in your collection.

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

Another big step forward for our cloud-based Connect software, making it even more customizable:

The columns in List View are now resizable. That is, you can now change the width of the columns by simply dragging the dividers between the column headers. Hover your mouse over the divider and it will turn blue, then drag it make the column wider or narrower.

TIP: double click the divider to make the column auto-size to its’ current content!

See it in action:

Do you prefer the automatic column widths, the way it was before? No problem, just go to the Settings screen and enable the “Size columns automatically” settings.

You can now manage multiple sub-collections within one account. The collections will appear as little tabs at the bottom (e.g. like in Excel), so that you can easily switch between them.

Create and manage collections

Open the menu top left and click “Manage Collections” to:

• Create new collections
• Rename existing collections
• Remove collections
• Change their order (drag and drop)

Note: the CLZ mobile app currently does not support multiple collections yet (coming soon!). For now, you CAN sync multiple collections to the mobile app, but they will appear mixed together, as ONE database.

New: Notes as a column

The Notes field can now be added as a column in List View:

(example screenshot from Movie Connect)

New:

• The resizable panels in the add screen now have the same design as the ones in the main screen.

Fixed:

• iPad: Wrong initial panel layout in the main screen when the app is started in landscape mode.

A useful update of your app today, that is, if you are using the app on an iPad:

All panels in the main screen (folders, list and details) are now resizable using draggable separators between the panels, so that you can customize the layout to your own liking.

• All panels in the main screen (folders, list and details) are now resizable using draggable separators between the panels, so that you can customize the layout to your own liking.
• The resizable panels in the Add screen have been updated to use the nicer look of the draggable separators.

New: quick search box in the Folder Panel!

Another useful addition to your software today, as we added a Quick Search box in your folder panel.

Especially useful for those long folder lists, e.g. when using Series as the folder field. Just type a few letters of the series title and the folder list will instantly “filter down” to the matching series, while you type!

See it in action:

A nice time-saving feature was added to your Comic Connect software today:

Next / Previous buttons in the Edit Comic screen

These buttons let you go through your comic list to make changes, while staying in the Edit Comic screen. Just use the Next or Previous button on the bottom left.

While doing so, the screen will keep you on the same tab and same field, making it super-easy to make changes to same field(s) for multiple comics.

New: Redesigned app icon

We designed new icons that give new users a better indication of what the app actually does (as opposed to just a different color CLZ logo), but still obviously belong together, when shown together.

Fixed:

• List did not scroll to top when the status bar was tapped
• App could crash on startup in rare cases

A small UI tweak today, made necessary because of the growing number of field options for the folder panel: the folder field menu is now grouped into 4 categories.

This should make it easier to find the field you are looking for.

New: Redesigned app icon

We designed new icons that give new users a better indication of what the app actually does (as opposed to just a different color CLZ logo), but still obviously belong together, when shown together.

And if you have Android 8.0 or higher, we’re also including an “adaptive app icon” as of today which are in line with all your other app icons!

Do you like to customize your software to suit your needs or just your personal taste? Then we have big news for you today, as we have just introduced four “Skin” choices in your Comic Connect software:

• Default (the standard look, as it was before, so dark toolbars, light content)
• Dark (dark toolbars, dark content)
• Light (light toolbars, light content)
• Blue (shades of blue, with yellow highlights)

On top of that, we have given you 3 template style choices for the Comic Details area: Dark, Light and Blue. Either to match your Skin choice, or to mix to up, it’s up to you.

Both the Skin and Template selectors can be found in the Settings screen, under Customization.

Screen shots:

Default Skin:

Dark Skin:

Light Skin:

Blue Skin:

New in your Add Comics screen: a Pull List tab, a useful tool for listing your favorite comic series, so that you can easily find them when you add your weekly purchases, or for quickly adding upcoming releases to your wish list.

To add a series to your Pull List, first find it using your Series or Barcode tab. Once you found your series, hover your mouse over the series cover to reveal a white star icon. Click the star to add this series to your Pull List.

Then, click the Pull List tab to reveal the series on your Pull List! Expand a series to see which issues have been released in the last 2 weeks, or still have to be released, and if you want, add them to your wish list!

We just added 6 new folder options to your Comic Connect software, for grouping your comics in 6 different creator folders!

You can group your comics in folders based on:

• Writer
• Artist
• Cover Artist
• Editor
• Inker
• Colorist

Example: Click the folder icon top left and select Cover Artist to see all your comics neatly grouped in cover artist folders. Click a cover artist to see all comics that have that person as a cover artist!

A new grouping option is now available in your Connect!

Click the folder icon top left and select Release / Publication Year to see all your items neatly grouped in a year folder. Click on a year to see all items that were released/published in that year!

This week, we added several new settings and improvements, all based on your feedback:

New setting for the List View: Wrap column content

This new “Wrap column content” setting can be found in the Settings screen. It lets you choose if text in the List View columns should wrap to multiple lines or not.
The default is YES / Checked. Uncheck this setting to keep your List View row as single rows, resulting in a cleaner list and more rows in view.

New Date Format setting

Also found in the Settings screen, this new selector lets you choose how dates are displayed, anywhere in the program where date are shown.
Choose from:

• 7 January 2018
• 07 Jan 2018
• 7 Jan 2018
• January 07, 2018
• January 7, 2018
• Jan 07, 2018
• Jan 7, 2018
• 07/01/2018
• 7/1/2018
• 07/01/18
• 7/1/18
• 01/07/2018
• 1/7/2018
• 01/07/18
• 1/7/18
• 2018-01-07

Core IDs can now be added as columns in the List View

Now available in the Column Selection screen for the List View: The Core ID fields.
E.g. for movies, add the Core Movie ID and Core Media ID fields to your lists, to quickly find movies that are not linked to our Core entry yet.

Some changes in CLZ Comics for you:

• The buttons to switch folders, sorting and view options have been moved to more logical places to make them more accessible.
• The skins and templates options are now only available from the settings screen.
• The selection mode button has been removed, just tap and hold on an item to start selecting items.

Fixed:

• Update from Core could (in some cases) overwrite manually entered information for the Edition, Crossover, Imprint and Age fields.

Previously, setting up for the usage of the CLZ Barry as a barcode scanner required going to your Connect Profile page and back. Not anymore.

You can now get started with CLZ Barry straight from the By Barcode/ISBN tab of your Add screen. Just click the blue text “Set your Barry ID” on the far right of the barcode box and all the setting up can be done right then and there: