Some websites may no longer work properly due to future Chrome and Firefox versions

Computers are very picky, and even the smallest change can have a big impact on how they work. There are rumours that updates for popular browsers, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, are coming soon, and the version numbers of these browsers might create serious problems for some websites.

You might get a sense of the problem by taking a quick look back at the history of computing.

If a bug got in the way of the programming inside an old computer, it would crash. The phrase ‘computer bug’ was coined at this time. Silicon chips instead of vacuum tubes have made modern computers more trustworthy and the term “bug” is used to describe a programming error.

It’s only a matter of time before Chrome and Firefox hit version 100. When things like this happen, there is typically a reason to celebrate. Just as it is noteworthy for people to have a birthday when they’re clocking an age that ends in zero, so it is in computing.  Adding a zero is also significant for computers, but the important detail here is the number of digits, not necessarily the number of zeros. 

There were two digits in the last 90 updates, and Mozilla has pointed out that some websites may not be prepared for this shift. According to a security-focused news site, BleepingComputer, a number of high-profile websites are currently experiencing issues with version 100 of the operating system. It’s like a repeat of Y2K. 

A User-Agent (UA) is a piece of data that a computer’s browser sends to a website to let it know what capabilities it has. For example, Chrome browser for Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; has a User Agent (UA): Chrome/94.0.4606.54. 

By grabbing the two digits immediately following ‘Chrome/94’, code can quickly determine whether or not a browser can support a particular video streaming format. This is sometimes all that is required to determine whether or not a browser can support a particular video streaming format. As soon as the version number reaches100, the first two numbers will be interpreted as version10, which is a very outdated version of the software that couldn’t handle much more than text and photos.

It’s predicted that Google Chrome will reach the 100th version by March 29, 2022, while Mozilla Firefox could be May 3. A similar challenge arose in the past when browsers reached their tenth version, therefore greater preparations are in place this time. Rather than penalising prominent websites that haven’t kept their code up to date, Google and Mozilla want to resolve this by reducing the UA version number to two digits. Hence, developers need to start planning for these kinds of problems now. The two most popular browsers, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, will do their best to fill the void until then.