What's new in CLZ Games?
We have changed our company name!
We were previously called “Collectorz.com”, but as everyone called us “CLZ”, we figured, let’s go with the flow and officially rename the company to just “CLZ”!
But that’s not all. This week also brings:
- a new company logo and styling
- a completely new website at clz.com (previously www.collectorz.com)
- new names for our web-based software, previously called Connect, now simply CLZ Comics Web, CLZ Movies Web, CLZ Games Web, etc…
And, the reason for today’s app update:
- a new app icon that fits the new CLZ styling
- the icon now supports light/dark/tinted device theming!
- new app logos and styling inside the app
Fixed for iOS:
- iPad: Edit / Sort Settings screens were too small since iOS18
A nice update for CLZ Games again, in which we did improvements to several areas of the app.
- Re-design of the Sort Order screen
- New Date and Month folder options for all date fields
- Statistics: new look for Most Recent and Most Valuable top lists
Today, a smart tweak to the “Title” tab of the Add Games screen that will save you a lot of typing.
As you know, when you start typing in the Title box, the app always shows you a dropdown with 5 suggestions for the most popular matching games. Tap one of these to instantly select that game.
In this update, we added a new “Search for …” entry at the top of that dropdown, with a smart search suggestion. Basically it tries to “auto complete” what you are typing.
Tap that box to do a Title search on those words.
In today’s Game Connect update, a smart tweak to the “Title” tab of the Add Games screen that will save you a lot of typing.
When you start typing in the Title box, it has always showed you a dropdown with 5 matching game suggestions to pick from. But in today’s update, we added a new “Search for …” entry at the top of that dropdown, with a smart auto-completed search suggestion.
Click that box (or hit down arrow on your keyboard, then Enter) to do a search for that auto-completed search term.
This update to Game Connect brings a noteworthy enhancement to your barcode scanning feature. With a complete redesign of the “Unrecognized Barcode” screen, you can now easily add games to your collection even if a barcode is not recognized by the Add Games screen.
Note that this Unrecognized Barcode screen not only makes your life easier, but also strengthens the CLZ Core!
In the next few weeks, we will be revamping the Add Games screen. But instead of doing one big update with all changes, we will be working on this bit by bit, in several smaller updates.
This week, we started the project with something that has needed a redesign for quite a while, the platform picker, that is, the tool for selecting the platform to search in. Previously a simple drop-down, we made the platform picker into a nice pop-up screen now, that lets you select your own favorite platforms to be listed at the top!
CLZ Games is now free to use up to 100 games, for as long as you like.
This “Free Mode” includes access to all functionality, including CLZ Cloud syncing (for online backups and transferring data between devices).
Got more than 100 games? Then subscribe (US $20 per year) and add as many games as you need. Of course, feel free to try the app with 100 games first!
In today’s update, we improved the behaviour after searching using the search box top right.
Previously, when you selected a game from the “suggestions dropdown”, the software would take you to a separate full screen page showing the details of that game. This behaviour was a bit annoying as it would take you away from the main screen and you needed to click “Back” on the top left to get back to it. Also, the main screen would then show you the full collection again and would be scrolled back at the top again. Meh..
A small update for your CLZ Games app today, in which we rectify a big mistake we make in version 9.0 (two mistakes in fact). Also, we improved the camera barcode scanner and introduced a new setting for customizing your app.
Summary of today’s changes:
- Game values are back in the Add Games screen
- Check Values screen now accessible for “grandfathered” users too
- Faster camera barcode scanner for adding games by barcode
- New setting in Settings screen “Show Completed”
A big update for your Game Connect web-based software today, which is all about pick list fields.
Pick list fields (and the pick lists behind them) are an important part of your game database. These are the fields in the Edit screen that let you pick from a list of possible values, with that list being fully configurable by you the user.
Examples of pick list fields are Location, Owner, Genres and Tags (both multi value pick list fields), but also Platform, Developer and Publisher.
Now, a lot of the questions we usually get about Game Connect are related to pick list fields and can usually be answered with:
“Just use the Manage Pick Lists screen”
Renaming Locations, Merging duplicate Genres, fixing series sort problems, fixing typos in Platform names, etc… it is all done in the Manage Pick Lists (MPL) screen. An important and powerful screen, but… not so easy to find if you don’t know where to look or don’t even know what to look for.
With today’s Connect update, we are making this a lot easier: We have improved the Manage Pick Lists screen itself AND made it more accessible / discoverable:
In short:
- Improved Manage Pick Lists (MPL) screen
- Easy access to the MPL screen right from the folder panel
- Refreshed Edit Comic screen, with better pick list fields and direct MPL access
v9.0: Improved Add by Title screen, Collection tabs, Check Value screen and more!
Version 9 is here, a huge update for your CLZ Games app. In fact, it may even be the biggest update we ever did for CLZ Games, with many new features and several big improvements.
On top of that, our content team has been working for months to check and correct game cover images, to make sure the cover image exactly matches the barcode (regular editions vs collector’s editions, US vs EU vs JP vs AU covers, etc…).
- Improved Adding Games by Title: big cover images for the various game editions (regional, collector’s editions, etc..), filter releases by Region (US, EU, JP, AU, etc.. )
- New collections tab-bar: switch between collections using tabs at the bottom
- New Check Value screen: quickly look up the value of a game, by scanning its barcode or searching by title (requires subscription!)
- Improved Update from Core: now lets you replace cover images with better ones from Core
- Better screens for dealing with “unrecognized barcodes”
- More platforms icons: more platforms now come with their own icons
Thanks to our translator Peter Stickler, the Connect web-based software is now available in Swedish!
If you are interested in translating Connect to your language, let us know!
The main translations we are looking for at the moment are:
- Norwegian
- Italian
Thanks to our translator Frank Silas Kesia Jensen, the Connect web-based software is now available in Danish!
If you are interested in translating Connect to your language, let us know!
The main translations we are looking for at the moment are:
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- Italian
Here’s the latest results from our endeavour to improve the UI/UX of all Connect features and screens. Today, we made further improvements to both the “Manage Collections” tools and the new Edit Multiple tool.
The Edit Multiple feature is an efficient tool for making changes to multiple (or all) of your database entries in one go. It has been part of the Connect web-based software for many years (since May 2015!). For the CLZ mobile apps, this “batch editing” ability was introduced much later, in July 2020.
However, when we did that, we were forced to completely re-design the feature’s user interface, to make it work well on the small phone screen. And a strange thing happened: the UI/UX we ended up with, turned out be much better than the original Edit Multiple design of the Connect web-based software and the Collector desktop software 🙂
So today, we are bringing that new Edit Multiple setup to the Connect web-based software!
This update is all about the Pre-fill screen, you know, the screen that appears when adding items and lets you pre-fill fields while adding, like Location (= Storage Box for comics), Owner, Purchase Date/Store/Price, etc…
This Pre-fill screen was introduced in Dec 2020, with a fixed set of fields. Then a year later, in March 2022, it was made completely user configurable, so that *you* could choose which fields appeared on the screen.
This screen turned out to be a popular tool, but we’ve seen one problem with it:
Sometimes, users pre-fill a field for a specific movie (e.g. Purchase Price or Quantity), then forget to CLEAR it for the next items they add. Causing lots of items to be added with that same field set incorrectly.
So today, we are making another tweak to the Pre-fill screen:
A lot of the questions we get about CLZ Games can usually be answered with:
“Just use Manage Pick Lists”
Renaming Locations, Merging duplicate genres, fixing platform sort problems, fixing typos in formats, etc… it is all done in the Manage Pick Lists screen. An important and powerful screen, but… not so easy to find if you don’t know where to look or don’t even know what to look for.
With this update, we are trying to fix all that. We have made the screen much more accessible / discoverable AND we have made several improvements to the MPL screen itself.
This update is all about the Pre-fill screen, you know, the screen that appears when adding items and lets you pre-fill fields while adding, like Completeness, Location, Owner, Purchase Date/Store/Price, etc…
This Pre-fill screen was introduced in Jan 2021, with a fixed set of fields. Then a year later, in Jan 2022, it was made completely user configurable, so that *you* could choose which fields appeared on the screen.
This screen turned out to be a popular tool, but we’ve seen one problem with it:
Sometimes, users pre-fill a field for a specific game (e.g. Purchase Price or Quantity), then forget to CLEAR it for the next games they add. Causing lots of games to be added with that same field set incorrectly.
So today, we are making another tweak to the Pre-fill screen:
- The Pre-fill screen now highlights filled fields in orange, so that they stand out more.
- Also, we added a “Clear” button, to quickly clear all Pre-fill fields.
Fixed
- iOS: iPad: Year folders: the wrong year folder could be selected.
- Android: Values weren’t downloaded for games sometimes.
The Link with Core screen is a tool in the CLZ Cloud site and the Connect web-based software that is used to link entries with CLZ Core. E.g. items that you added manually, or items that you imported. The Link with Core tool is mostly used by users coming from other software and are switching to CLZ.
Today’s update is a “behind the scenes” update, to make the Link screen faster and to improve search results.
Improved
- The search now uses our elastic search engine, giving you better and more meaningful results for your unlinked items.
- Better uses of indexes and the elastic engine makes everything much faster too!
On top of that, we’ve improved the search results in the Link with Core screens for some Connect flavours specifically:
- Comic: Now takes series popularity into account.
- Movie: Now now also digs into our vast library of “alternative” and foreign titles for movies to obtain a result that matches your movie.
- Music: Now also uses Discogs for finding results.
What is Linking with Core?
Connect is built around our central online database: Core. All factual data and cover images are used and shown directly from Core. If you have been using the Add screen to catalog your items, then most, if not all of your items will already be linked to Core.
If you’ve added some items “manually” or if you’ve imported a list from CSV (or from somewhere else), there will not be a lot of data in them.
To automagically fill in data for your items, the items need to be linked with Core. If you have unlinked items, you can link them to Core using the Link with Core screen which is found in the menu top left!
Earlier this year, we updated our Connect software to make it fully localizable / translatable. Shortly after, we went live with Dutch and German version of Connect.
Today, after the hard work of three loyal CLZ users, three more language options went live on the site:
- French
- Spanish
- Hungarian
Thank you, Philippe, Rafael and Pető!!
New:
- Added in-app getting started tips for new users (tap “dismiss” to dismiss)
In this update, we try to tackle a problem that we often see in our support system:
Users changing phones without updating their CLZ Cloud first. Or even worse, without even having a CLZ Account yet.
Which of course cause data loss (and a lot of sadness).
So in this version, we are trying to create more awareness of:
- The importance of creating a CLZ Account, so that you can Sync with CLZ Cloud.
- The importance of keeping your CLZ Cloud up-to-date by actually Syncing with CLZ Cloud.
New Sync button in main screen
When not in sync with CLZ Cloud, a new Sync button will appear on the main screen, above the Add button. This way you will always know if there are still items to sync up to CLZ Cloud or down from CLZ Cloud (even when you use auto-sync).
(Don’t like this button? In the Settings screen, switch OFF the setting that says “Show on-screen sync button”)
New “Sync with Cloud!” bar when not logged in
When using the app while not logged in to a CLZ Account, a new bar will appear at the bottom of the main screen that says “Sync to CLZ Cloud for an online backup”.
Hopefully that will help prevent future data loss.
(Don’t like this bar? In the Settings screen, switch OFF the setting that says “Show backup suggestion bar”)
New 5-game “Demo Mode” for new users
For new users who just downloaded the app, we introduced a new “Demo Mode” that lets you add 5 games before committing to the actual 7-day free trial subscription.
Fixed on Android:
- Edit Comic: When you’ve edited something, and you tapped “Next”, it would skip an item.
Continuing with our quest to revamp and re-design features and screen of the Connect web-based software. Today we took on the Import from CSV/TXT screen.
Connect and CLZ Cloud users often ask us about printing or exporting only a part of their collection, e.g. “how do I print just my wish list?” or “how do I export a list of just one platform?”.
Now, this was possible, but it took a few steps that were not intuitive for many users. You had to:
- Make the selection in the main screen first, e.g. by using folders, the collection status filter or the search box
- Checkbox all games in the selection, using the checkboxes in the list
- Then use the Print or Export button on the special blue action toolbar above the list
With today’s update, we are making this a lot easier. And while we were at it, we also freshened up the user interface of the Print to PDF and Export to CSV screens.
Great news for all our German-speaking customers: starting today the Connect web software is also available in German!
Our programmers have been working for months to make the Connect software available in other languages (other than English). This meant:
- Make the Connect software translatable, to ensure that all interface texts come from a translation database.
- Making a nice and easy translation tool for our translators, so that they can translate all texts efficiently and also maintain the translation when new functionality is added.
- And of course, to do the actual translation.
And today we can take the next step: Connect is now available in German!