v9.7: Various improvements for Add Comics, Statistics and Main screen

Today, a big v9.7 update for your CLZ Comics, with a couple of new features and lots of small improvements all over the app, including a resolution for something that has annoyed many users for over 23 years!

Here’s what’s new:

• Add Comics screen:
  • New “Hide Owned” toggle on Series tab, for hiding all issues that you already own
  • New snappy “Confirm” popups replace the old and slow Preview pages
  • New look for issue cards on Issue tab
• Statistics screen:
  • Removed the “Comics by Creator” top list, and replaced it with:
  • New Top Artists list, that includes all artist type roles
  • New Top Writers list, that includes all writer type roles
• Main screen:
  • List and Card View now include the Variant Description for each comic
  • Several layout improvements to the comic details page
  • New folder options “All Artists” and “All Writers”

Add Comics screen

One new feature here and several UI/UX improvements:

New “Hide Owned” toggle on Add by Series tab

Here’s one that came up on the Club CLZ forum. For the Series tab in the Add Comics screen, a user requested a way to hide all issues that you already own, so that you can focus on your missing issues more easily.

We thought that was a great idea, so here it is. Tap the “Box” button at the top to “Hide Owned” comics. Tap it again to show all issues again.

Automatic “Hide Owned” mode when coming from Missing Comics screen

The popular Missing Comics tool has a “Open in Add Comics” link that lets you open the current Series in the Add Comics screen, so that you can easily add the missing issues to your wish list.
So we figured, let’s make it open in Hide Owned mode, to make that even easier.

New snappy “Confirm” popups replace the old and slow Preview pages

Strangely enough, this was an area where CLZ Comics was a bit behind on the other CLZ apps (for music, movies, books and games). So we caught up now, so that comic collectors can enjoy the same snappiness too.

Adding comics, either by Series, Issue or Barcode, is now a bit snappier and easier, since we removed the old and slow full screen Preview page and replaced it with a quick “Confirm” popup that just slides in where you are. No more tapping back and forth between search results and Preview panel.

The Confirm/Preview pop-up shows all information you need to make your decision, including the full creator list.

The Confirm popup while in the By Series mode:

The Confirm popup while in the By Issue mode:

New look for result cards on Issue tab (same in Check Value screen)

When we created the new NCBD tab, we gave it a new layout for the Cards view.

We really liked how that turned out, so we decided to bring that new look to the Issue tab too:

Statistics screen

One small step for CLZ developers, one giant leap for comic collectors worldwide….

This is an interesting story. First, a bit of background:

Since 2001, our comic database tools have had a Creator list for each comic, that lists all people that worked on the comic, like artists, pencillers, inkers, colorists, writers, scripters and also including editors and editors-in-chief. These creator lists are mostly provided automatically from our CLZ Core, but can also be customized by the user.

For 23 years, this was all okay, with never a complaint from our users…

That is… until two weeks ago… when one user posted in our CLZ Comics group on Facebook that his biggest annoyance with the app was that Editors were included in the Comics by Creator top list in the Statistics screen. And instantly, the comments section exploded with lots of “me too” reactions. Turns out pretty much everybody was immensely irritated by this!

Of course we fully understand their point: If you check your top Creator stats, you want to see your favorite artists and writers there. You don’t want that top list to be “polluted” with editor and editor-in-chief names, who are of course credited in many many comics and hence appearing in the top positions.

But, to be honest, we were all a bit sad that we only heard about this (apparently) huge annoyance 23 years after we made this major mistake. Especially since resolving this major problem literally is what we devs call a “five minute fix”.

So for today’s version 9.7, we decided to actually spend those 5 minutes to bring you a nice solution:
We removed that super-annoying “Comics by Creator” top list, and replaced it with two nice top lists:

• Top Artists: showing all creators that worked in artist-type roles, like artist, cover artist, penciller, inker, colorist, painter, etc…
• Top Writers: showing all creators that worked in write-type roles: writer, scripter and plotter.

See how editors and editors-in-chief are missing from both top list? Another crisis averted 🙂

Of course, I am joking around a bit. But seriously… if you are super-annoyed by any part of the app, please please please, just let us know!. Preferably on the Club CLZ forum, but a message through the CLZ Help Center is okay too. Who knows what may happen.

Main screen

Next up, the main screen. Several tweaks here too:

List and Card View now show the Variant Description

In the Add Comics screen, the Card View has shown the Variant Description for all issues for quite while, as it an important factor in deciding which variant is the one you own.

But for some reason, the Variant Description was never included in the Card View in the main screen. While it is an important bit of info there too.
So, we added it to both the List and Card view now. Pretty cool, right?

Several layout improvements to the comic details page

This is an area where we keep tuning the layout, we keep seeing things that can be improved. So we did several small changes again, mainly to the top part:

• The Publisher name is now shown above the Series title, in a small font. The Series Group was shown there, but we figured this made more sense. The Series Group is now shown lower down.
• The Issue number has been moved to the top right, in a look that is consistent with all other screens.
• The colored box with the Collection Status icon has been moved down a bit.

We hope you like the changes as much as we do!

New folder options “All Artists” and “All Writers”

After the “Editor Gate” episode on Facebook and our 5-min-fix described above, we figured: let’s take this one step further and also include these new stats as folder options for the main screen:

• New folder option “All Artists”: showing all creators that worked in artist-type roles, like artist, cover artist, penciller, inker, colorist, painter, etc…
• New folder option “All Writers”: showing all creators that worked in write-type roles: writer, scripter and plotter