Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox urgently find ways to limit the bad effects of version 100

The Y2K bug was supposed to wreak havoc on the internet at the turn of the century, but nothing serious happened in the end. However, giants like Google, Microsoft and Mozilla cannot be subjective, they are rushing to test a similar scenario when their browser is about to hit the 100th version milestone.

All current browsers adopt a two-digit numbering scheme as none of these have passed the 100th version. However, Chromium-based browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge will hit the 100th version milestone in the first half of this year.

Switching from a two- to three-digit numbering scheme can have some undesirable and possibly harmful effects.

As of September 2021, Google has been preparing for this inevitable situation. Now, Microsoft also conducts its own tests. Interestingly, both Microsoft and Google use the same method. They added two flags to the browser for testing.

Basically, these two flags force the "User-Agent" identity to report that Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome are using version 100. They then track how websites respond or don't respond to the information. this. From the resulting data, engineers will have to figure out how to get websites to understand and accept the three-digit version of the browser and respond by correctly communicating with the browser.

Meanwhile, Mozilla conducted a similar test in August 2021. The developer of the Firefox browser says the Internet in general and the majority of websites appear to be fine with the User-Agent passing the 100 mark.

Currently, Chrome kernel browsers are all at version 97, version 99 is currently being tested on the Dev channel. If every browser adopts the same 4-weekly update schedule as Microsoft Edge, the 100th version will be released before the end of the first half of 2022.

David Pac

Update 21 January 2022