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Both browsers are about to hit a three digit version number and trying their best not to break your favorite websites.
Firefox, Chrome, and Edge are all reaching version 100 soon, and turns out the internet isn’t fully equipped to handle web browser version numbers hitting three digits. Sites like Yahoo, HBO Go, and Bethesda.net are already struggling to fathom such a large number in early tests, so developers are having to step in.
Websites need to identify your browser via a «user-agent» string, which includes the name of the browser, the major version number, and the minor version number. Until now, the major version number has only ever maxed out with two digits and adding another one seems to be a problem big enough that Mozilla and Chrome developers have been testing the effects before the new updates hit in the next few months.
This has happened before. When browsers hit two digit version numbers a little over 12 years ago, some websites couldn’t handle it either. It was a mini Y2K for browsers and apparently some sites didn’t plan for this to happen again.
Firefox and Chrome have plans to avoid any catastrophic issues though. Firefox, as detailed in a blog post, will just lie to browsers about its version number or lock the browser to version 99 for everyone as they test other methods. Chrome plans to freeze the major version number at 99 and then sneak in the actual version number in the minor part of the user-agent tag.
Microsoft, however, hasn’t said how it plans to face any issues with Edge’s version 100 outside of asking people to test it on its update page.
While the issues don’t appear to be widespread, it’s still concerning that our access to websites can fall apart if someone counts to 100. You’d think after big scares in the past (which turned out to be nothing to worry about, by the way) we’d be better prepared for big numbers in tech.
Tyler has covered games, games culture, and hardware for over a decade before joining PC Gamer as Associate Editor. He’s done in-depth reporting on communities and games as well as criticism for sites like Polygon, Wired, and Waypoint. He’s interested in the weird and the fascinating when it comes to games, spending time probing for stories and talking to the people involved. Tyler loves sinking into games like Final Fantasy 14, Overwatch, and Dark Souls to see what makes them tick and pluck out the parts worth talking about. His goal is to talk about games the way they are: broken, beautiful, and bizarre.
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