Due to the "version 100 problem" of browsers, many sites may be unavailable

The developers of Chrome and Edge have released the official 98th versions of browsers, Firefox has only one less. Soon all these programs will receive versions with three-digit numbers, and this may break operation of online services.

Test and beta versions of browsers already have numbers 99, the release of 100s will take place in the coming weeks. But some services are not able to read three-digit version numbers from the user agent (User Agent).

User Agent is a string with data about the operating system, browser engine, and other key information that is passed through the HTTP header of the page. It allows services to adapt the look of the site for a specific browser, warn about version incompatibilities, block access to all or certain functions.

Browser developers from Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft have already begun testing sites in browsers with version 100 in the User Agent. They report problems in a special repository on GitHub. There are 22 relevant items on the list, more than half have the status of “critically serious”. The biggest sites that may not be available are Slack, HBO Go, Bethesda and Yahoo.

A similar situation arose in 2010 when browsers reached 10th version. Some of the problems with parsing libraries for websites have been resolved, but some points still need to be improved.

At Mozilla declaredthat if the crashes become massive, the Firefox version will be frozen at around 99. Together with colleagues from Google, developers have added the function of displaying the hundredth version to browsers in order to quickly collect information about possible problems.