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Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

csspro.com

31–40 of 299 posts

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#31

I think the comments criticising the pricing are wrong, you can't compare one generalist tool to another highly specialised tool. But on top of that comparing to Figma, Framer or other VC backed products is a mistake, these products are priced to capture market share and grow rabidly. They are clearly underpriced. I may be wrong but CSS Pro looks like a small bootstrapped product, pricing for market growth doesn't ne…

On the subscription side, I think it's an issue as it moves the control away from the consumer when doing those upgrades. With the older, one-time purchase upgrade model, which has since fallen out of favour; I could evaluate once a year whether the updated product was worth the additional cost. With a subscription model, there's a chance I could end up funding the development of features that I neither want nor need.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#32
This could also be a bookmarklet. That would make it more secure as bookmarklets only have access to the page you use them on.

Looking at the code, you can indeed run it as a bookmarklet. I went to https://www.example.com and typed this in the browser console:

    s1=document.createElement('script'); s1.src='https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.7.0.slim.min.js'; document.head.appendChild(s1); s2=document.createElement('script'); s2.onload=()=>window.cssProReady(); s2.src='https://csspro.com/demo-build/mainnewnew.js'; document.head.appendChild(s2);
Boom! The tool is running.

So prefixing that line with "javascript:" and putting it into a bookmark would let you use it on any site you wish, simply by clicking the bookmark. Without having to install an extension.

Would be a good alternative the author could offer imho.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#33
post #29

The killer feature here would be hooking this up to Netlify/Vercel etc. and having a 2-way-write. Every time you update something in the CSSPro editor, your codebase is actually updated and the site is rebuilt in the background. This would let you essentially design in the browser and avoid the tedious copy/paste, rebuild, reload cycle.

How would that work with VCS?

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#34
The lifecycle of a startup:

- Build MVP

- Raise funding

- Build pricing structure

- Eventually die and open source anything for many reason. Pricing is one such reason.

Without free pricing tier, how can you get new users to play with your product ? (if it's not open source).

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#35
post #29

The killer feature here would be hooking this up to Netlify/Vercel etc. and having a 2-way-write. Every time you update something in the CSSPro editor, your codebase is actually updated and the site is rebuilt in the background. This would let you essentially design in the browser and avoid the tedious copy/paste, rebuild, reload cycle.

This is what I’ve wanted for ages from browser dev tools. It’s now fairly standard to have hot refresh where the dev server uses websockets to control injecting changes and refreshing the browser when changes are made in the code files. I want to go the other way. If I tweak css in browser, have a way to write those changes back to the project. The real challenge would be traversing a change in browser css back to scss/less.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#37

I think the comments criticising the pricing are wrong, you can't compare one generalist tool to another highly specialised tool. But on top of that comparing to Figma, Framer or other VC backed products is a mistake, these products are priced to capture market share and grow rabidly. They are clearly underpriced. I may be wrong but CSS Pro looks like a small bootstrapped product, pricing for market growth doesn't ne…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#38

There's some neat things in here - the gradient editor showing the stops on the element is pretty nice. But overall the design of this tool is very difficult for me to use. It's trying too hard to be pretty, at the expensive of utility. I found the Typography section to be really difficult to grok with a complete lack of labels and borders around text boxes. It's neat that you have the same flexbox controls that Webf…

For gradient tool, I can recommend https://gradient.style by Adam Argyle

Not only is it easy to use (IMO), but it's also more powerful than what design tools offered today, with new color spaces being one of my favorite features.

Intro: https://twitter.com/argyleink/status/1649124742463623169

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#39
This!! Really would like to be a customer on this, but as someone who edits pages like once a month maybe, it's hard to justify the price.. But you totally nailed the workflow as far as I can tell from the video. I always jump into the inspector to tweak, and it is never a good time.

I might just buy it anyway...

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