Will Chrome, Edge and Firefox v100 workarounds be enough if websites don’t work?

Three of the most popular web browsers in the world — Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox — are about to reach version 100. While reaching the century should be a moment of celebration, there is concern about how some websites will respond to the triple-digit version numbers, which they feel may not be capable of reading. The version 100 updates of Chrome and Edge are expected in March, while Firefox may roll out theirs in early May. The potential problems stem from the fact that certain websites cannot read triple-digit user-agent strings. This is the identification that a web browser sends to the website that is being accessed, which in turn allows the compatible version of the website to be served for the browser that is being used. Many websites across the internet are configured to read only two-digit strings, which is up to 99. If a web browser serves ‘100’ as the version to such a website, it may be unable to display some of the content, or be entirely inaccessible. “Without a single specification to follow, different browsers have different formats for the user-agent string, and site-specific user-agent parsing. It’s possible that some parsing libraries may have hard-coded assumptions or bugs that don’t take into account three-digit major version numbers,” says the web development team at Mozilla. However, they point out that the parsing logic for website libraries was improved when browsers moved from single to two-digit versions. What are parsing the libraries in question? The process of parsing is done to analyse a string of symbols in computer language or data structures. This is required because it allows data that is being served to be understood the software that is trying to access it. These libraries access web browser identification and then serve content optimised for those browsers and versions. It was around 12 years ago when web browsers largely evolved from single-digit versions to two-digit versions (i.e., from version 9 to version 10, for instance). There is a common belief that a switch from two to three version numbers causes fewer problems. A helpful tracker on GitHub, a platform for hosting software, is one to keep an eye on in case you are one of those who update software on Day 1. Some of the popular websites that are being reported for incompatibilities with version 100 include Yahoo, HBO Go and Standard Chartered. Reported incompatibilities with Netflix and Slack, for instance, are now being reported and fixed. Developers at Google have been testing websites for possible issues, since November, when the Chrome 96 and subsequent versions of the browser included a feature flag option that identified itself as version 100 to websites. In the case of the Chrome web browser specifically, the cut-off is version 40. If a website reads version 100 as version 10, it’ll lead to websites being partially or completely inaccessible. At the same time, developers are likely to integrate an option that’ll make it possible for web browsers to identify themselves as version 99, till a fix is in place on incompatible websites. “If you type ‘about:compat’ in the Firefox URL bar, you can see what is currently being fixed. If a site breaks with the major version being 100 on a specific domain, it is possible to fix it sending version 99 instead,” says Mozilla. Firefox nightly builds (these are the test versions) can be configured to force report version 100. A similar code has already been integrated in the test builds of Chromium, benefitting Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, which use the same foundations. “This is a fallback plan in case there is significant compatibility issues with a three-digit major version,” reads the description of the code. Does this remind you of the Y2K bug from many years ago, when there were fears computers will not be able to dinguish the year 2000 from the 1900s, leading to mass panic? The solution for forcing browsers to communicate version 99 is temporary at best, but could give websites some time to introduce fixes. All said and done, there may be some glitches on certain websites you regularly access in the initial days after version 100 updates for Chrome, Edge and Firefox.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vishal Mathur is Technology Editor for Hindustan Times. When not making sense of technology, he often searches for an elusive analog space in a digital world.
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