Moving on…

We would like to officially announce that xBrowse has suspended operations, and no longer will be allowing users to conduct cross-browser tests, either using our “Try It” page, our free Lite plan, or one of our paying plans. This change is effective as of December 2011.

Existing users may still sign in and view their old tests in our convenient screenshot-viewer.

The Back Story

When we first envisioned xBrowse way back in 2009, there were no real great cross-browser testing solutions on the market. There were a few (most notably, Gomez, BrowserShots, and Litmus) but in our opinion none of them were optimally designed for an interactive cross-browser testing workflow.

We set out to build what we felt was a better cross-browser testing solution, both in terms of fast rendering speed, a convenient viewer for browsing results, and a layer of intelligence for automatically detecting differences and generally making developers’ lives easier. In the year that followed the marketplace caught up significantly, and several new players (e.g., Adobe Browserlab, offered entirely for free) emerged making cross-browser testing a more challenging marketplace in which to sustain a new business. xBrowse has always been a side project for us, and costs us considerable time and money to maintain, so we have decided to close up shop - at least for now.

We had a great run, thanks in large part to Zurb, who helped put us solidly on the map by serving up our first 50,000 tests as part of their Bounce app, and also as part of their Tiny Bounce app, which was one of the top performing apps in the 10K apart contest.

What’s Next?

While we are suspending operations for xBrowse, there are still many challenges faced by the web development community that we would like to help address. So stay tuned! In the meantime, if you need a good cross-browser testing solution, we may recommend these services to you:

• Adobe Browserlab
  Adobe has done a great job with their cross-browser testing service, offers fast renderings for a wide array of browsers, and some nice perks like saved browser sets. The service is free until April 2012, and well worth a try.
• Cross Browser Testing
  Cross Browser Testing offers a great service if you are in need of a more interactive testing solution, and allows you to log in to virtual servers remotely for testing your website or web application.
• Litmus
  While refocused around HTML email testing, Litmus still offers a strong suite a web browsers to test against, as well as a very polished UI for viewing your results. They’ve also got an industry-leading HTML email testing solution, so you get more for your money when you sign up for an account.

Thank you!

Thanks to all of our users and supporters who helped made xBrowse a great experience for us. We raise a toast to your future success.

Warmest,
Erik and Mikey
Co-Founders, xBrowse