The reinvigorated competition in the browser market over the last few years has definitely been a boon for users, but having a number of browsers with very high user numbers makes life a bit harder for developers who want to write extensions. Crossrider, which is coming out of beta today, aims to make things a bit easier for developers. The service offers a cross-platform development platform for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.
Developers who want to use the service, which is available for free, only have to write their code once and can then deploy their extensions across the supported browsers. Crossrider uses JavaScript and the popular JQuery framework, so jumping in should be pretty straightforward for developers who are already familiar with JQuery. Using Crossrider, the company says, developers also don’t have to worry about updating their extensions when a new version of a browser is released.
In addition to its core service, the company also offers a cloud-based IDE that allows developers to create their extensions without the need to download and install an SDK. Crossrider also helps developers publish their extensions, as well as an update service and analytics.
The company was founded in 2010 and has raised about $2 million so far and its investors including from Oren Zeev, a Founding Partner at Orens Capital and a former General Partner at Apax Partners. The service managed to attract about 7,000 developers during its beta phase and its extensions now power about 90 million users.
The service got a bit of negative press earlier this year, by the way, after a few hackers used the service to develop a plugin that replaced Facebook ads with links to the hacker’s own ads.
