Chrome Edge and Firefox Version 100 Can Paralyze Websites

The version numbers of the world’s most popular browsers are approaching 100, which can quickly lead to problems accessing certain websites. According to the teams behind Firefox and Chrome, this is due to user-agent strings that are about to get longer. Like colleagues from bleeding computer According to the developers of the Chromium engine and the Mozilla browser Firefox, there may be problems accessing some websites due to the switch to a three-digit version number in the browser’s user agent. Mozilla has already started corresponding tests and has published the results in a blog post.

Big Websites

As a result, a small number of the tested websites can actually experience huge problems. Specifically, Mozilla mentioned the online offers from HBO, Bethesda, and Yahoo, which included data failure, 403 errors, and display problems. In addition, a lack of support for the respective browser was reported in some cases.

Because there are no specific specifications for handling user-agent strings, many websites handle the data in different ways. As a result, website parsing libraries may have fixed ways of handling browser version numbers or just bugs that prevent them from handling three-digit version numbers, Mozilla said. The website administrators still have some time to convert their offers to the new three-digit version numbers. However, the developers of the Chromium engine from Mozilla and Google also want to take countermeasures themselves.

If there are issues that cannot be resolved before the release of browser version 100 in late March or early May, the browsers should simply report version 99 in the user agent to avoid errors. Alternatively, you’ll want to respond with code overrides to resolve any issues.