What's new?

A big update for the Comic Collector software today, with several improvements and fixes, all based on the daily feedback we are getting from our users.

Changing your folder field is now much easier

The folder panel is one of the most powerful tools of your Comic Collector software. However, in our support conversations with users, we are finding that most users are always leaving their software on the out-of-the-box Series folders and never use anything else.

Which is sad, as they are missing out on a great tool. The folder panel instantly lets you group and filter your database on other fields too, e.g. by Publisher, by Grade, by Storage Box, etc.. Super useful and fun!

Now… I must admit that changing your folder panel to a different field was not very easy or obvious. As you had to create a “preset”, add your desired field(s), give the preset a name, save it, then finally activate the new preset in the folder panel.

So… we decided to make this all *much* easier, especially for single field folder settings.

• You can now directly select any folder field for the folder panel, without having to create a preset first. Just instantly pick your desired folder field under the “Folders” heading in the menu of the Folder button.
• Presets are now called Favorites.
• You can still create your own Favorite folder options, e.g. for multi-level folder settings (e.g. Series Group, then Series), or just to make a specific 1-field setting easily accessible.
• Your Favorite folder settings are listed at the top of the menu, under the Favorites heading.
• New: no more need to manually name your Favorites. Sensible names are created automatically (the selected fields separated by slashes).

Columns and Sorting

• For Columns and Sorting, “Presets” have been renamed to “Favorites” too.
• For Sort Favorites: no more need to manually name your Favorites. Sensible names are created automatically (the selected fields separated by slashes).

Edit Comic: add multiple Creators, Characters, etc.. in one go

The Select screen for adding creators, characters, etc… now includes checkboxes, so that you can multiple in one go. No more need to go back and fort between the Select and Edit screen to add multiple.

The new checkboxes for selecting multiple values in one go are now available in the Select screen for the following fields:

• Credits
• Characters
• Signed by
• Tags

Fixed:

• Using “Select All” in your list was very slow. Super fast again now 🙂
• Print screen: “Field ID 221 has no XML tagname” error, when printing the Collection Status field as a column.
• Removed the annoying “beep” when searching in the Add Comics screen.

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:

• An access violation error could occur when canceling the “unrecognized barcode” pop-up.
• Backdrop image could be cleared from the Series pick list item when adding a comic.

Fixed:

• If no rating was set, it would show with rating “0” in the rating column. It now shows “nothing” in the column again.
• If no rating has been set for a comic, it would show in a “0” folder, and now shows in a “[None]” folder in your folder panel.

Fixed:

• In some case, new entries added through Add from Core would get images with .tmp extensions, instead of .jpg.
• Editing pick list items directly from the folder panel did not work anymore.
• Dragging items between folders did not work anymore.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger!

Here’s another big update for your Comic Collector software, with two further performance improvements:

Faster image downloads

We were able to make several improvements to the way images are downloaded (covers, preview art and backdrops), making it much faster than before.

This change affects all places where images are downloaded from our servers, that is, when Adding Comics from Core, when Updating from Core and when down-syncing from CLZ Cloud.

Faster Update from Core

On large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your comics one by one, that is, doing separate requests to our server for each and every comic.

So for this update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 comics at a time, making it much much faster! (roughly 4 times as fast).

Remember: Update From Core can be used to update your local comic entries with possible extra data from our Core online comic database. To use this feature, select some comics, right click, then choose Update from Core.

Fixed:

• When using My Rating as the folder field, the “0” folder was missing.
• When using multiple levels of folders in the folder panel, sometimes the displayed counters were wrong.
• Images View: it is now possible to change thumb size using Ctrl + mouse wheel.

Fixed:

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

Fixed

• Images View: Improved spacing between thumbnails
• Images View: Mouse over on images didn’t show the title of the item
• Cover Flow: Now uses big sharp images instead of the small thumbnails
• Find Cover: Could give an Access Violation when finding GIF images

When users send us screenshots during support conversations, we are seeing that many of you are using the Shelves View when browsing your collections. And we can’t blame you, that IS a cool looking view 🙂 However, it *could* be a bit slow and jerky, especially when displaying many cover images in one list.

So our Windows guy Joe has spent several weeks to make this Shelves View faster and smoother. At the same time, our in-house graphics man AJ has created two new Shelf styles. Here’s what’s new:

• Images are now loading a lot faster.
• Scrolling is faster and smoother.
• Shelves background is smoother, no more visible tile edges.
• Shelves now always continue over the full width, even when a row is not full.
• Two new Shelf Styles are now available: White and Concrete.

TIP: here’s how to get to Shelves View:
in your program’s comic list panel, click the vertical Images tab on the right, then from the toolbar above the list panel, choose a Shelf Style. Use the slider to control the size of the images.

The new “White” style:

The new “Concrete” style:

As you all know, we have seen no new comic releases in the past 2 months. Luckily, things are slowly starting up again. At Collectorz.com, we took this opportunity to focus on the older comics in our database, especially the 1970 to 2000 era, where barcode recognition by our Core was still “below par”.

And with today’s CLZ Comics update, you can start enjoying the fruits of our labor!

Better barcode search results for older comics (1970 to 2000 era)

• Over 35 thousand extra barcodes are now being recognized.
• Add By Barcode feature now correctly handles multiple comics with the same barcode (quite common in this era) and nicely just presents to you all comics that match your searched barcode, even when spread over multiple series.
• Improved barcode search engine.

In the screenshot below you can see a barcode that is used in 9 issues spread over 3 series. The Add Screen will now show you all possible results we have for that barcode:

Re-designed search results in Add Comics screen

While we were at it, we also re-designed the search result entries for both title and barcode searches:

• Clearer layout of all search result entries.
• Issue numbers are now listed in “badges” on the left, separate from series titles and now change color depending on Collection Status.

As you all know, we have seen no new comic releases in the past 2 months. Luckily, things are slowly starting up again. At Collectorz.com, we took this opportunity to focus on the older comics in our database, especially the 1970 to 2000 era, where barcode recognition by our Core was still “below par”.

And with today’s CLZ Comics update, you can start enjoying the fruits of our labor!

Better barcode search results for older comics (1970 to 2000 era)

• Over 35 thousand extra barcodes are now being recognized.
• Add By Barcode feature now correctly handles multiple comics with the same barcode (quite common in this era) and nicely just presents to you all comics that match your searched barcode, even when spread over multiple series.
• Improved barcode search engine.

In the screenshot below you can see a barcode that is used in 9 issues spread over 3 series. The Add Screen will now show you all possible results we have for that barcode:

Re-designed search results in Add Comics screen

While we were at it, we also re-designed the search result entries for both title and barcode searches:

• Clearer layout of all search result entries.
• Issue numbers are now listed in “badges” on the left, separate from series titles and now change color depending on Collection Status.

As you all know, we have seen no new comic releases in the past 2 months. Luckily, things are slowly starting up again. At Collectorz.com, we took this opportunity to focus on the older comics in our database, especially the 1970 to 2000 era, where barcode recognition by our Core was still “below par”. And as of today, you can start enjoying the fruits of our labor!

Better barcode search results for older comics (1970 to 2000 era)

• Over 35 thousand extra barcodes are now being recognized.
• Add By Barcode feature now correctly handles multiple comics with the same barcode (quite common in this era) and nicely just presents to you all comics that match your searched barcode, even when spread over multiple series.
• Improved barcode search engine.

In the screenshot below you can see a barcode that is used in 9 issues spread over 3 series. The Add Screen will now show you all possible results we have for that barcode:

Re-designed search results in Add Comics screen

While we were at it, we also re-designed the search result entries for both title and barcode searches:

• Clearer layout of all search result entries.
• Issue numbers are now listed in “badges” on the left, separate from series titles and now change color depending on Collection Status.

New in the Cover tab of your Edit screen: built-in Crop and Rotate tools for your cover images!

Super useful for fine-tuning images that you uploaded or found through the Find Online tool. You can even Crop/Rotate images that you received from Core, in which case they will be automatically turned into a custom image.

To use the new Crop/Rotate tools, open your Edit screen go to the Cover tab and click the “Crop/Rotate” icon on the top right above the Front or Back cover image:

Then:

• Click the Rotate icon to rotate the image 90 degrees to the right.
• Drag the blue crop rectangle to indicate your desired crop area.
• Click Apply to apply the changes.

Adding Creators and Characters as folder options has been on our ideas list for a long time, but it was never implemented because of performance problems.
After all, on large collections, the list of creators or characters can get HUGE.

But during the past few weeks, our mobile team has been working to improve the performance of the folder lists, including the recently introduced folder list search.

Soo… today we can finally introduce the new folder options.
(BTW: the performance improvements we made will also make your Series folders faster!)

New folder options for Creators and Characters

With this update, we introduced 22 (!) new folder options:

• Characters
• All Creators (group by all creators, regardless of their “role”)
• Plus: separate folder options for all 20 creator roles:
  like Artist, Colorist, Penciller, Cover Artist, Writer, etc…

IMPORTANT: for correct sorting of Creator folders, you need to use Update from Core on all your comics. Here’s how:

• Go to your All Comics list.
• Tap and hold on 1 comic to select it, then choose Select All on the top right.
• Now tap the menu icon on the bottom left, then choose Update from Core.

Redesigned Select Folder Field screen

Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. And with todays addition of 22 more folder options, we *had to* come up with a better solution.

That is why version 5.5 also includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Series, Publisher, All Creators and Storage Box) instantly accessible at the top (see screenshot above).

Faster Update from Core

The Update from Core feature has become essential in this update, so that you can retrieve the correct sort names for your Creators from Core and get nicely sorted Creator folder list.

However, on large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your comics one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every comic.

So for this 5.5 update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 comics at a time, making it much much faster!

Enjoy!

Adding Creators and Characters as folder options has been on our ideas list for a long time, but it was never implemented because of performance problems.
After all, on large collections, the list of creators or characters can get HUGE.

But during the past few weeks, our mobile team has been working to improve the performance of the folder lists, including the recently introduced folder list search.

Soo… today we can finally introduce the new folder options.
(BTW: the performance improvements we made will also make your Series folders faster!)

New folder options for Creators and Characters

With this update, we introduced 22 (!) new folder options:

• Characters
• All Creators (group by all creators, regardless of their “role”)
• Plus: separate folder options for all 20 creator roles:
  like Artist, Colorist, Penciller, Cover Artist, Writer, etc…

IMPORTANT: for correct sorting of Creator folders, you need to use Update from Core on all your comics. Here’s how:

• Go to your All Comics list.
• Tap and hold on 1 comic to select it, then choose Select All on the top right.
• Now tap the menu icon on the bottom right, then choose Update from Core.

Redesigned Select Folder Field screen

Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. And with todays addition of 22 more folder options, we *had to* come up with a better solution.

That is why version 5.5 also includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Series, Publisher, All Creators and Storage Box) instantly accessible at the top (see screenshot above).

Faster Update from Core

The Update from Core feature has become essential in this update, so that you can retrieve the correct sort names for your Creators from Core and get nicely sorted Creator folder list.

However, on large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your comics one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every comic.

So for this 5.5 update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 comics at a time, making it much much faster!

Enjoy!

Fixed:

• “List index out of bounds” error when viewing / modifying TPB entries

CLZ Core is our central online comic database, that is the database that you search by barcode or by Series in the Add Comics screen. In general, the comic information delivered by Core is quite complete and correct, but you may sometimes run into entries that are quite sparse (e.g. just series, issue number and publisher) or even entries with incorrect data.

As of today, *you* can help us improve that, using the new Submit to Core feature!
Just fill in the correct data in your own entry, then select the comic and choose Submit to Core from the toolbar above the comic details:

Which takes you to a form the core.collectorz.net site, where you can see our Core data on the left and your own data on the right. Now use the green arrow icons to use your data to correct and complete our data. Then finally, click the big green Submit Changes button on the bottom:

Thanks for your help!

New in Connect today: We have added several keyboard shortcuts to the most commonly used features:

For the Main screen:

• Navigate through your items with your arrow keys (works in List, Images, Shelves and Card View!)
• Use c + a or c then a for Add from Core
• Use c + m or c then m for Add Manually
• Use c + h or c then h for Add Hardware from Core (Game Connect)
• Use c + j or c then j for Add Hardware Manually (Game Connect)
• Use c + e or c then e for Edit Selected Item

For the Edit screen:

• Use cmd/ctrl + s to Save and close
• Use cmd/ctrl + j to Save and go to Previous item
• Use cmd/ctrl + k to Save and go to Next item

New:

• “Collection Status” field can now be used as a folder field
• “Storage Box” field has been added to the Add from Core Quick Fill pop up

Fixed:

• Update All Values from GoCollect did not work anymore (on large collections)
• Problems using the Add Comics screen Pull List tab
• Resources/Handles related error when Adding or Updating from Core
• Series “have/want” summaries erroneously included comics from ALL sub-collections

Fixed:

• The app could crash when editing certain fields defaults.

Fixed:

• Fixed several issues with AutoSync that could cause Access Violation errors

Fixed

• When a comic was edited, empty ‘value’, ‘purchase price’ and ‘cover price’ fields were set to 0.00.