Why the arrival of Chrome 100 and Firefox 100 is shaking the Internet

Updated approximately monthly fire fox And chrome Soon he will celebrate 100^And Version. Currently, Firefox is 97^And version, while Chrome has already passed the 98 . stage^And Version. Which means that at the current rate, in the spring, they will both extinguish their hundredth candle. Barring any setbacks, it is scheduled for March 29 for Chrome and May 3 for fire fox.

However, it won’t necessarily be a party to some of the site’s editors…in fact, sleeping computer Reports are that Mozilla has already anticipated this transition to version 100, and the problem is that some of the most popular sites are no longer working! Not least since our colleagues reported that Yahoo! It’s no longer on display, just like the Eurosport and Slack player. Instead, an error message appears stating that the browser used is not supported by the site. The full list of bugs Available in This page.

Three-digit problem

The reason for this hiccup compared to that of year 2000 bug ? This three-digit number: 100. In fact, when you access a website using a browser, from a file the computeror tablet or cell phone, the server needs to be selected to display the site correctly. This is the job user agent (AU). Detects the browser editor (Mozilla, Safari, Opera…), its own rendering engine (Apple Webkit, gecko) Hence its copy.

Depending on the browser’s “identity card”, the server returns the most appropriate version of the website. For example, if you’re browsing from a mobile, the server will show a mobile-optimized version, not a reduced version of the the computer. The problem is that this function was not designed for three-digit numbers.

By the way, it wasn’t originally designed for two-digit numbers either, and when browsers first hit version 10 a little over 12 years ago, Problems It was quickly discovered and corrected. in home fire fox, as with Chrome, so we anticipated the problem and there are several tests in progress; Next to googleWe confirm that most of the malfunctions have been corrected. But, as some remain, it is necessary to find an unstoppable parade.

Two reviews are planned

So the developers of each browser have an alternative plan as Mozzilla wrote in his blog. In Chrome, it consists of adding a pointer to set the version to 99 and reporting the real major version number in the so-called “minor” part of the string user agent. Practically speaking, it will be version 99.100, while waiting for a permanent solution to be found.

On the Firefox side, the strategy is different as you can quickly debug a site that isn’t rendered. Basically, when the server fails to render with version 100, the renderer automatically switches to version 99.

And an edge in all of this? like browser Microsoft It is based on Chromium, the same engine used in chromeIt will also be affected by this bug, and unless it is corrected by then, it is possible to upgrade to version 99.100 thus to avoid any problem.