Peter R. Bickford

I'm wondering if there's any interest out there for an option to avoid downloading mature readers only titles as part of updates. (If this option would be combined with the current option to remove titles not in the update, it would have the effect of stripping off the mature readers only titles that aren't in stock). What does everyone think--worth it, or not? (FWIW: we've probably fielded the "why do you guys keep putting ribbons over the naughty bits" question at least as frequently). And no, before anyone asks, we're not going to start maintaining two sets of cover art to satisfy the "ribbon/non-ribbon" crowds 😉 -Pete

I think we just found the issue—download v3246 (under My Account > Registrations) and see if it doesn’t fix things for you. Best, -Pete

This is a built-in limit of the grid, and it's part of a trade-off between allowing for a free-form selection of cells. In short: allowing a free-form selection in the grid required us to give up the old behavior where selecting any cell selected the whole row. The current behavior is basically the same as with Excel: to select a whole line, you need to explicitly select the row by clicking the far-left cell.

Download the latest build (#3232) from My Account > Registrations, then do a File > File Tools > Rebuild Lists / Item Information. If you still have trouble after that, please contact support directly at support@comicbase.com

Try using File > File Tools > Rebuild Lists > Item Information, using the current build (3198)

What's the exact build of the software you're using (from Help > About ComicBase). If you download the latest build and force an update (shift while checking for updates), do your point-issues reappear? -Pete

Worth noting: the custom barcodes printed with ComicBase are unique to that particular database (they're identifying record numbers in that database). If you try to use them with a different database, you'll get random/no results. -Pete

I'm not able to reproduce what you're seeing -- I wonder if what you're experiencing is actually a refresh issue. Try playing with your view settings and seeing if it resolves. -Pete

In the case you're referring to, there is no regular issue, so all the variants are considered as needing to be shown. There's no ability to handle cases where. "1/A, 1/B, and 1/C were each 33% common covers, but 1/D was the super-limited convention special". If there was no issue that was just #1, it's considered that that issue number has no "primary issue" and the filter to "show regular + owned issues" is forced to show any issue that's either (a) in stock, (b) is a primary issue, or (c) all variants in cases where that issue # has no primary issue.

We've had a few (so far, unreproducible on our gear in the office) reports of backups not saving when you exit the program using the close box instead of File > Exit. Try to latest build -- posted yesterday -- and see if you can make the program not save a backup on your machine via any method of closing. (We changed up some of the closing routines to try to work around any cases where the process might close prematurely before saving backups when the window is disposed). -Pete

I'd suggest installing ComicBase 2017 and having a look at your original database. Do a File > File Tools > Rebuild Lists > Issue Information and confirm that your items are really there and listed as you expect. If, afterward, they somehow convert to being first printings, let us know and we'll have a look. (My suspicion is that you may have somehow entered the -1, -2, etc. part into the issue number field directly, instead of setting the printing number; if not, I'd definitely want to have a look at the database to see where things are going wrong for you). -Pete

Hi Antonio, The information we have is that 977-starting barcodes encode the ISSN number, and that--like Bookland--the supplemental typically encodes the cover price. If you're seeing that the supplemental is more frequently encoding issue/variation/printing, it'd be useful to know a few particular codes/titles so we can better determine how to handle these. -Pete

I can't comment intelligently on the cause of value changes without knowing your collection--all we really do is compute rolling averages on market pricing (a couple million data points each week). That said, one of the features we're looking to incorporate soon is to automatically generate a list of top dollar and percent gainers each week for your collection as it does the update, as well as other reporting tools. Watch for it as we get underway by checking the interim builds page on comicbase.com > support -Pete

Hi John, There was some garbage data in your Batman/Doc Savage Special title (the "Datemask" -- an internal field used to compute which years a title was published in) was null. If you delete that title and let the update reinstall it, you'll be fine. I've also rigged the latest build of ComicBase to automatically correct for this issue if it encounters it--re-download the latest build (3162) you'll be able to do the rebuild successfully. -Pete

This is going to be a bit of a dance between supporting the least capable phone out there, with the least memory--and not making life too difficult for people with big reports. Fundamentally, all the reports are just big html files, and I'd definitely prefer that they load up as one big file, so they're easily searched. It seems, however, that some folks are using devices which become unresponsive or sluggish when asked to parse the larger report files, forcing us to break them up after a certain point. There may be a clever use of javascript which could provide us with a unified "search all" -- if so, that'd be the way I'd like to approach the problem, ultimately. We'll try to explore this further once we punch a few more items off our "to do" list.

Scott: make sure you're running the current build (308x), and that you explicitly choose the Find > Title name or barcode option from the drop-down. If you still have problems afterward, contact support directly at 408-266-6883 Best, -Pete

I'd be curious as to what your experience would be if you booted with all your extensions turned off (other than the Microsoft ones) -- I wonder if you might have something running (anti-virus? security suite?) which is compromising your performance to this extent.

As a heads-up: changed the maximum report page size (before longer reports are broken into multi-section reports) from 2 MB to 1 MB. If you've been having trouble loading reports on your device, try reposting and seeing if the new reports aren't working better for you.

This has been a periodic problem since the contribution points are tracked by your ComicBase ID -- which in turn is tied to your email. If you change emails, you wind up getting lost in the process. As soon as we address some other issues, we'd like to re-jigger these to tie in by your comicbase.com user ID so that the problem doesn't recur. -Pete

Custom fields and checks are carried over by the conversion process to 2020. If you're not seeing the _names_ of the custom items, those are stored in your preferences, and can be reset by entering in their names under Setup > Custom Fields (make sure you're selecting the right collectible--remember, ComicBase 2020 now has multiple types of media it covers, all of which can have their own custom field names). If you're not seeing the _data_ for your custom fields, I'd encourage you to reinstall ComicBase 2017, and double-check that you're converting over the proper database (make sure you see the data in the database you're about to convert). If you still have trouble, please contact support directly at support@comicbase.com, sending them a link to your old ComicBase 2017 database, and noting the exact data you expected to see, but aren't seeing in the converted database. -Pete

Hi Gregg, Looking at the server, I'm seeing a certain number of dropped connections--likely firewall-related. We are testing a new version of the program which switches up the way files are saved to the server and should be less troubled by firewalls--please get in touch with me directly if you (or anyone on this thread) would like to try it out. It's a huge change in connectivity, so I'd like to get as much testing from folks with various security/firewall/networking issues into play on it as possible before we make it part of the general release. -Pete

Give it a go now--it looks like last week's update missed the sync window when we did the database switchover (so the server knew it was expected to be there, but the files weren't present in the right place on the server yet, thus the message you got). -Pete

What behavior, in particular, are you referring to? -Pete

Check three things: 1. Make sure you're running the latest build (I believe it's 20.0.1.2882 currently) 2. Click the Find drop-down and re-select "Title Name of Barcode" 3. Try expanding the top pane by dragging the separator window to make it slightly larger. If none of these restores the auto-search, please send support@comicbase.com a copy of your ComicBase Settings file (from %appdata%\Human Computing\ComicBase\ComicBase Settings.ini) -- we'll see if we can spot the issue. -Pete

When you click an issue, it display issue information; when no issue is selected, it displays title information (including publisher). Since we're re-using the same screen space (and every pixel counts for some users with smaller screens) we're re-using the publisher space for the issue #. If you want to refresh the publisher display, just de-select any issues and the title info will display (ctrl-click any selected issue lines). -Pete