What's new in CLZ Movies Web? (page 5)
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
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.
New in the CLZ Cloud viewer and Movie Connect: a Print to PDF feature!
Generate a PDF file from your movie list, ideal for printing.
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 movies from for instance an existing collection you may have in a spreadsheet or different software. All you have to do is export those movies from your other software to a text or CSV file and follow the steps on the new Import page in your Connect account.
If you are adding most of your movies “By Title”, then this will be a huge time-saver.
Here’s how the new “Search-As-You-Type” feature works:
- In the Add Movies Automatically screen, just start typing the first letters of the title you want to add.
- While typing, a drop-down list will appear, showing the five most popular titles that match, including the release year and a small thumbnail image.
- For recent / popular movies, it usually takes only 2 or 3 letters before it shows up. For older or less popular movies, type a few more letters.
- Once you see your movie appear, use the arrow keys to select it, then hit Enter.
- Then under Search Results, that exact movie will be listed, automatically Previewed on the right.
- Click the Add Selected button to add it to your database.
Searching your movie collection in Movie Connect or the CLZ Cloud viewer is now much faster.
However, to achieve this performance improvement, we have had to limit the searching to:
- Title
- Barcode
- Year
Previously the search feature also searched cast and crew names, but this turned out to cause server performance problems when searching large databases. That is, with the search engine we are now using.
We are currently working on the implementation of a different, much faster search engine, which may enable cast/crew searching again in the future.
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
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.
“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!
We have completely rewritten our Core for Movie search engine, that is, the online code that gives you results when you search our Core by Title in your Add screen.
The new search engines will provide better search results that are more “to-the-point” and less “fuzzy”. Also, results will be returned much faster.
Previously, the Connect free 30-day trial limited trial users to 100 items in their database.
To allow full evaluation of our Connect software during the trial, we have removed this database limit. The free 30-day trial now lets you add, import or sync as many items as you want.
Enjoy!
For better security, we have now moved both the Cloud and Connect websites to the HTTPS protocol, using so-called Extended Validation SSL certificates.
This SSL connection is indicated by the nice “green bar” in your address bar:
In the past 2 weeks, we have moved all 5 online media databases (movies, books, music, comics and games) to 5 new separate database servers.
This week, CLZ web developers Sven and Dion have further optimized these new servers to give you even better performance from Core, especially for title searches that have many results.
The fruits of their labour are now immediately noticeable in the ADD screens of your Connect software. Enjoy!
Today, we have completed the big project of moving our 5 Core and Cloud databases to a new server solution. Previously, everything was running on two high performance dedicated machines: one for all databases and websites, the second for all cover images.
For better performance, stability and scalability, we are now splitting up all services into multiple separate cloud-based solutions:
- 5 separate database servers for all 5 Core+Cloud databases
Status: completed today! - 5 separate storage servers / delivery networks for all cover images.
Status: preparing the switch now. ETA: several weeks. - 1 new fast web server for the Cloud, Core and Connect sites and services.
ETA: within 2 months.
A few weeks ago, we introduced the ability to assign multiple formats to a movie, for example, Blu-ray AND DVD. However, the user interface for doing so was a bit clunky (and annoying, to be honest).
So fixed that. Here’s our new super-fast UI, just check checkboxes to select the formats:
Enjoy!
This week, we updated both our CLZ Cloud storage for movies and the Movie Connect software with 6 extra data fields, multi-format support, plus the ability to track your “Seen It” status per episodes (for TV Series).
Multiple new field options have been added for the folder panel (for both Connect and the free CLZ Cloud viewers). My favorite new folder option: The Year folder for movies:
The home / hub page of your CLZ Cloud or Connect account now loads a lot faster.
(the 5 separate collection lists are now “lazy-loaded”)
A few weeks ago, we introduced the new Sort Order screen. Today we’re taking the next step: allowing multi-field sorting.
For example, you can now sort your list first by Year, then within the years, by Title.
Just drag multiple fields from the Available panel to the Selected panel, one by one:
New in all five Connect editions: Export your list to a text file, e.g. to CSV format, for importing into spreadsheet programs like Excel, Numbers, etc…
You can either:
- Export your entire database, by choosing Export from the Tools menu.
- Export only a selection. To do this, go to Select Mode, select some items, then click the Export button at the top.
Just over a week ago, we introduced a new design for the Columns screen. Today, we moved the new design over to the Sort Order screen, so that both have a consistent user interface.
Just drag your desired Sort Field to the right, then select Ascending or Descending using the toggle buttons below the field.
Next up: multi-field sorting!