Anything else like Skybound Stylizer out there? [closed]

Question

I hate to say it but I'm crack addicted to Skybound Stylizer 5.

It's a rare purchase for me because I normally only go with open-source or software that has 'per user' licensing. The license and DRM on this thing are horrid. It does a hardware check (including a check for the existence of a battery) and only lets you install on one laptop and one desktop. Of course, I've got a work desktop and laptop as well as a two home desktops and two home laptops. I'd love to use the thing at home but there's no way I'm going to pay for another separate license when I'm just one guy with multiple machines no one else uses but me.

Aside from my loathing of the license type and DRM, the $79 price seems reasonable (no problem there).

I've tried searching for hours and can't find another CSS editor that visually works on the rendered pages. I'm using Rails and the whole Stylizer concept of being a multi-engine web browser that lets you target elements on the rendered page is a life saver. Nothing else I've seen would really add any benefit above Rubymines CSS editing (which btw - thank you for the per-user license Jetbrains).

If someone else had something similar, I'd gladly pay twice the price for a per-user license. Funny - I'd be happy paying $150 for a per user license, but the thought of paying for two $79 license because (my gosh) I use two different laptops annoys the crap out of me.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Disclosure: I work for Skybound.

Firstly, I'll openly apologize for our potentially over-zealous piracy protection system. We were having serious licensing abuses with the previous version, and needed to do something about it.

Having said that, we tried to walk the line between being flexible and opening the door to licensing abuse. The activation system is based on your actual processor ID, so you could technically activate on an iMac, then activate on Windows through BootCamp, then inside a couple of VMs, and then do the same thing all over again on a laptop. We also de-activate licenses without too many questions asked if you need to move to another computer. I'm not aware of too many other activation systems that are this permissive.

Unfortunately, there isn't anything else like Stylizer on the market. It's an easy product to build poorly and an extremely difficult product to build well. CSSEdit (our competitor-ish) would probably be the closest, but Stylizer caters to a more serious user, hence the higher price tag.

To the commenters suggesting that the OP "go learn CSS", I suggest you experience the speed advantage of things like real-time preview, point & click editing, etc, (heck, even go try CSSEdit), before making this common and completely-off-the-mark judgement. These products are the tool of choice of some of the most qualified CSS experts in the industry.