Chrome, Edge and Firefox browsers may fail loading websites due to its 3-digits version

Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox, three of the world's most popular web browsers, are soon to hit version 100. While hitting the century should be a cause for celebration, several websites are concerned about how they will adapt to the triple-digit version numbers, which they believe may be unreadable. The possible issues originate from the fact that certain websites are unable to read triple-digit user-agent strings. This is the identity sent by a web browser to the website being browsed, allowing the suitable version of the website to be delivered for the browser being used.

Several websites on the web are set up to read just two-digit sequences up to 99. If a web browser sends the version '100' to such a website, it may be unable to show some of the information or be completely unreachable. "It's conceivable that certain parsing libraries have hard-coded assumptions or defects that don't take three-digit major version numbers into consideration," notes Mozilla's web development team. They do, however, point out that when browsers switched from single to two-digit versions, the parsing logic for website libraries improved. 

These libraries identify web browsers and then offer content optimised for specific browsers and versions. Since November, when Chrome 96 and following versions of the browser enabled a feature flag option that marked itself as version 100 to websites, Google developers have been evaluating websites for potential concerns. In the case of the Chrome web browser, the cut-off point is version 40. Simultaneously, developers are expected to provide a setting that allows web browsers to identify themselves as version 99 until a remedy is implemented on incompatible websites.

If a site fails with the major version being 100 on a certain domain, Mozilla claims it is feasible to repair it by sending version 99 instead. "This is a fallback strategy in case there are serious compatibility concerns with a three-digit major version," according to the code's documentation. After everything is said and done, there may be some difficulties on particular websites you visit on a daily basis in the days after Chrome, Edge, and Firefox version 100 upgrades.