Here’s a warning for those of you who use the Chrome, Edge, and Firefox browsers. All three are going to hit a major milestone very soon that will prevent popular websites from working on them. All three browsers will soon hit version 100. And while that might seem like a nice milestone to hit, it also can cause chaos similar to the fears that set off the year Y2K panic.
Browsers about to reach version 100 (Firefox, Chrome, Edge) could cause certain sites to fail
Major milestone: Chrome and Firefox will soon reach version 100!
The version number is going up to three digits and both browsers are working on mitigating the potential impact of this change. Learn more about it and pitch in to help with testing ️https://t.co/FtPl4CRjfk
— Chrome Developers (@ChromiumDev) February 15, 2022
That’s because until now, only two-digit versions of these browsers have been available. And with older websites able to read only the first two digits of the version numbers, Firefox, Chrome, and Edge will appear to be using version 10 to these websites and block the affected browsers from accessing these pages.
For example, Google plans on using a flag that will freeze Chrome at major version 99. The real major version number will appear in the minor version of the User-Agent string (the UA string is used by the webserver to determine the browser being used, the version of the browser, and the operating system employed). Thus, issues can still happen with this backup plan which is forcing Google to continue to test it.
Microsoft’s plan is unknown, and Mozilla plans on fixing broken websites by using intervention techniques to repair these sites (a hot fix, in other words). If the problems become too severe, the major version of Firefox can be frozen under the magic 100 mark.
But it does seem a bit odd that Firefox, Edge, and Chrome are all going to hit version 100 so close together time-wise, so what could be the reason for that? An amazing cosmic coincidence? A plan devised by Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft over a decade ago?
The “version 100” issue might remind you of the fears over Y2K
You’ll see that Germany’s Daimler.de page doesn’t support version 100 of Edge. Petalmail.com won’t work with version 100 of Firefox and Chrome. And Brownells.com will not work on version 100 of Chrome and Firefox.
These are just some more of the sites that will be impacted. Hopefully, the plans that will be put in place by Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla will correct this issue.
