I’ve just noticed that on the popup on the ‘CLZ Book Web Software’ if you try to edit that says ‘This feature only available in the full CLZ Book Web Software’, it also says this:
‘It can be a great companion to the CLZ Book mobile app or the recommended alternative to the legacy old Book Collector downloadable desktop software’ (my emphasis).
The phrasing of this concerns me a bit. The use of ‘legacy’ and ‘old’ seems to imply that the desktop software is not going to be actively developed in the future, or will be phased out.
Am I reading too much into this? As long as it’s not possible to add user-defined fields to the web version (among other things), the desktop version is always going to be more useful to me than the web version.
What a coincidence (being on CLZ Web while not having a subscription, clicking Edit or Add, and seeing a popup that I actually did indeed add “legacy” and “old” to a couple of days ago)!
So, yes: We have stopped the development of the legacy Collector desktop software quite a while ago (early 2023). There will not be any feature updates anymore, but we may still do maintenance/compatibility updates when absolutely necessary.
Our complete focus is on the CLZ Web web-based software and of course the CLZ mobile apps. For use on your computer, the CLZ Web software is the way to go and we are recommending all desktop users to switch to the web-based software ASAP.
Since the new CLZ.com website, the legacy Collector desktop software has been removed from the site and is not available for new users anymore. Existing users can still renew your desktop software, by LOGGING IN to the CLZ Shop at https://shop.clz.com.
More about Collector versus CLZ Web in a forum post here:
Okay, the post you quote definitely slipped through the cracks (I don’t know whether this was included in any emails to subscribers; my bad if there was and I missed it, but if there wasn’t an email specifically covering this it would have been helpful!)
This is disappointing, but I do understand the reasons. I have been reworking things to make them available on the mobile version (for example, I’m gradually adding a box set for each collection, anthology and magazine so that I can add each story as a entry, which will make it available on the mobile version), so I can see maybe moving to the web version in the future (as I already have for Games).
There are a couple of things that would need to be implemented before I could do this:
User defined fields being available on the web version (in the 2023 note you say
So I assume this is planned to be implemented at some point?
Box sets on the web version need all the fields that it has on the desktop version, particularly the purchase information (Purchase Date, Store, etc.) Notes would also be useful, but not be a deal breaker!
Those are the main things for me personally, though adding the ability to record multiple ‘reads’ of the same book (and who it was read by) would help persuade me
I have 100s of hours of work put into the database, so I’m definitely keen not to lose any of the information that’s important to me!
Yes, it will very likely be this year (don’t hold me to that though).
Box Set is indeed due to have some more fields, it’s likely those will be added to Web.
An expension of the read it field into multiple users, percentage/pages for books, multiple reads, is a cool feature that we do have on our request list, and will likely make it to the web/mobile apps at some point…
For me, one of the major deal-breakers is that the web version doesn’t allow custom images. Many of the books in my collection are older, and don’t have ISBNs or even LCCNs. Being able to see the actual image of my actual book is very helpful, as I can avoid buying duplicates or be sure I don’t have a certain copy of a title.
Is this feature on the to-do list for the web version?
