News: all updates for our software and apps

One of the most popular features we added to the CLZ Books app in the past few years is the Pre-fill screen. You know, the screen that pops up when adding new books from Core and lets you “pre-fill” some fields for the new additions, right there and then. Without having to go back and edit the entries afterwards. A big time-saver for most users.

The set of fields that is available on the Pre-fill screen has always been fixed, limited to Location, Owner, Purchase Date/Store/Price, Quantity and Tags.

However, after the release of this feature, we instantly started getting requests for more fields to be added to the Pre-fill screen. Which makes sense, I mean, if you always fill in a field that is not on the Pre-fill screen, you would have to “edit after adding” anyway, rendering the entire Pre-fill screen useless…

So today we are taking the Pre-fill feature to the next level by making the screen completely user-configurable. That is, to allow you to choose your own Pre-fill fields!

And while we were at it, we made some other related improvements. Here’s what’s new in version 7.1:

User-configurable Pre-fill screen: choose your own fields
Pre-fill: new for Purchase Date and Reading Date: Use “Today”
The Pre-fill screen is now also used to set field defaults

Read more

The “Automatic key comic info” feature, introduced early November, has proven to be enormously popular… BUT it is also easily THE most controversial feature that we have ever introduced to any of our software titles!
Most users are loving the extra little trivia about their comics. But others are annoyed by too many comics being “key” for reasons that are not important enough in their opinion.

Soo… let’s see if we can improve this feature, so that we can remove most of the annoyance and make it useful for a larger part of our audience.
Today, we introduce the following improvements to the key comics feature:

Distinction between Minor Keys (blue icon) and Major Keys (yellow icon)
New “Key Category” field, automatically delivered from Core, e.g. “First appearance”, “Death”, “Cameo appearance”, “Iconic cover”, etc..
New “Update Key Info” tool in the CLZ Core, that is fully configurable (Minor/Major Keys, Allow Overwrite/Clear). No more need to use Update from Core.
Key icons now also show in issue lists in Add Comics screen.
New charts in Statistics screen, for Key Comics and Key Category.

The “Automatic key comic info” feature, introduced early November, has proven to be enormously popular… BUT it is also easily THE most controversial feature that we have ever introduced to any of our software titles!
Most users are loving the extra little trivia about their comics. But others are annoyed by too many comics being “key” for reasons that are not important enough in their opinion.

Soo… let’s see if we can improve this feature, so that we can remove most of the annoyance and make it useful for a larger part of our audience.
Today, we introduce the following improvements to the key comics feature:

Distinction between Minor Keys (blue icon) and Major Keys (yellow icon)
New “Key Category” field, automatically delivered from Core, e.g. “First appearance”, “Death”, “Cameo appearance”, “Iconic cover”, etc..
New “Update Key Info” tool in the CLZ Core, that is fully configurable (Minor/Major Keys, Allow Overwrite/Clear). No more need to use Update from Core.
Key icons now also show in issue lists in Add Comics screen.
New charts in Statistics screen, for Key Comics and Key Category.

The “Automatic key comic info” feature, introduced early November, has proven to be enormously popular… BUT it is also easily THE most controversial feature that we have ever introduced to any of our software titles!
Most users are loving the extra little trivia about their comics. But others are annoyed by too many comics being “key” for reasons that are not important enough in their opinion.

Soo… let’s see if we can improve this feature, so that we can remove most of the annoyance and make it useful for a larger part of our audience.
Today, we introduce the following improvements to the key comics feature:

Distinction between Minor Keys (blue icon) and Major Keys (yellow icon).
New “Key Category” field, automatically delivered from Core, e.g. “First appearance”, “Death”, “Cameo appearance”, “Iconic cover”, etc..
New “Update Key Info” tool in menu, that is fully configurable (Minor/Major Keys, Allow Overwrite/Clear). No more need to use Update from Core.
Key icons now also show in issue lists in Add Comics screen.
New charts in Statistics screen, for Key Comics and Key Category.

Fixed:

A crash could occur when opening the Updated PriceCharting Values report

pricecharting updated values

It’s the last day of the year, so this is CLZ Alwin with the final CLZ Newsletter for 2021. But first: A happy, healthy and safe 2022 from the entire CLZ Team: Martin, Rowdy, Sven, Stijn, Joel, AJ, Pim, Joe, Bernard, Sytske and me, Alwin!
Let’s hope that in 2022, we will finally get rid of this Covid tragedy!

Today’s newsletter topics:

It has been a bit of a slow month, with few releases. Most of the team has been taking their well deserved days off from work this month. But… in January we will be ramping up immediately, with big releases coming up, see the news below:

CLZ Books / CLZ Movies / CLZ Games 7.0 : New features and lots of improvements
Coming up for ALL products: User-configurable Pre-fill screens
Coming up for comics: Minor/Major Key distinction + Key Categories

Read more

barcode scanning key comics pre-fil

A huge 7.0 update for your CLZ Games app is now available, with new features and lots of improvements to existing functionality. All in one go and all based on your feedback!

New in version 7 today:

Use barcode scanner to search your own database
New Collection Status: Sold
New Collection Status icons and colors
Improved Add Games screen: enlarge thumbs, new beeps, num pad for barcode entry
New: after Updating Values and closing the report, you can now re-open the report
New Favorites section in Manage Pick List screen
New setting to enable/disable showing trailers in the game details
The quantity field now shows in the list entries (when not “1”)

Read more

adding games barcode scanning key sold

A huge 7.0 update for your CLZ Movies app is now available, with new features and lots of improvements to existing functionality. All in one go and all based on your feedback!

New in version 7 today:

Use barcode scanner to search your own database
New Collection Status: Sold
New Collection Status icons and colors
Improved Add Movies screen: enlarge thumbs, new beeps, num pad for barcode entry
New Favorites section in Manage Pick List screen
New setting to enable/disable showing trailers in the movie details
The quantity field now shows in the list entries (when not “1”)
In the Statistics screen you can now use “Tap to show all” to show all recent additions

Read more

adding movies barcode scanning key sold

A huge 7.0 update for your CLZ Books app is now available, with new features and lots of improvements to existing functionality. All in one go and all based on your feedback!

New in version 7 today:

Use barcode scanner to search your own database
New Collection Status: Sold
New Collection Status icons and colors
Improved Add Books screen: enlarge thumbs, new beeps, num pad for ISBN entry
New setting to enable/disable downloading of genres/subjects
New Favorites section in Manage Pick List screen
Other small tweaks

CLZ Alwin here, with the CLZ Newsletter for November 2021.
Syts and I are currently dealing with the busiest week of the year: the Black Friday craziness. Processing over 200 support tickets everyday, and answering lots of questions in our Facebook groups. Providing renewal advice, correcting wrong purchases, helping with problems, etc…

So let’s start with a quick reminder of the CLZ Black Friday Sale 2021:

CLZ BLACK FRIDAY SALE: 33% discount on all subscriptions

The deal is very simple: 33% discount on the “Pay Yearly” options for everything CLZ, so for the Collector desktop programs, the Connect web-based software and the CLZ mobile apps.

To take advantage: »» LOGIN to the BLACK FRIDAY page here ««

This Black Friday sale will end on Cyber Monday, November 29, 23:59 EST, so only 3 days left!

Today’s newsletter topics:

As you know, the entire CLZ team has been working on a comic related project in the last few months. Which has resulted in 3 major releases for our comic cataloging tools this month, the main attraction being automatic key comic info from Core (first appearances, cameo appearances, major event, iconic covers, etc..).

In the meantime, the team has already moved on to give our other products some well deserved attention. First, big v7 releases for the other 4 CLZ mobile apps, v22 releases for the other 4 Windows programs and… many updates for the Connect web-based software.

These are the November 2021 releases:

Huge updates for all comic cataloging tools (CLZ Comics, Comic Connect and Comic Collector), with automatic key comic info from Core, many new fields, etc..
CLZ Music 7.0 : New features and lots of improvements
Connect: new Progress Bars for all “slower” actions
Connect: new Add from Core settings: select which fields to download from Core

In today’s update we’re introducing new Add from Core settings screen, that lets you configure exactly which fields you want to download when adding new books.