The browsers Firefox and Chrome receive regular major updates with new features. However, the upcoming update is worrying for developers. It only changes a small detail, but that has significant effects.
Every user browsing the internet uses a browser to surf online or download things. Chrome is now the market leader, followed by various large and small browsers, all vying for a share of the users. For example, there is a gaming browser that MeinMMO tested for you.
What exactly is changing? With one of the upcoming updates, the browsers are approaching version number 100. This may sound trivial to us, but for our internet – or at least the websites you want to access there – it poses a real problem. MeinMMO explains what exactly is behind it.
The internet cannot handle the number 100
What is the problem? Websites need to identify your browser via a “User-Agent” string that includes the browser name, the main version number, and the minor version number.
The browser is the user agent and thus the intermediary between you and the website. As a string, that is, a sequence of numbers, the browser provides certain data to the website. This includes the name of the browser, but also your operating system or language.
This is important so that certain websites like Facebook or Twitter can automatically redirect you to the appropriate language version. Tracking services also use this data (so-called fingerprint) to identify and categorize you across the vast internet.
What exactly is the problem? The transmission of numbers does not work with the browser version when it reaches 100. Many websites reportedly cannot handle the three-digit number and thus cause the browser to crash. Many users are reporting on Github that they are experiencing major issues with the current beta.
Websites cannot be opened, causing the browser to crash. How many users and especially how many websites are affected, developers cannot say yet.
When are the new versions coming? Chrome and Firefox plan to release their version 100 on March 29 and May 3. Until then, the developers still have plenty of time to address the issues and potential impacts.
Numbers have caused problems before.
Have there been such problems before? This is not the first time the internet has had issues with three-digit numbers: On December 31, 1999, many computers had trouble rolling over the date to the next year. After 99 comes 00, and there was a fear that computers might interpret this as a step backward instead of forward. This was also known as the “Millennium Bug”.
Games like Diablo II: Resurrected, which received a refresh, initially struggled with many network requests. This was also because the game’s code is very old and does not necessarily meet modern requirements.
Internet issues arise repeatedly and are often caused by people: Last year, many users had problems as crucial services like Twitch, Amazon, Twitter, and other internet services suddenly stopped working. However, it was not a version number that caused the issues, but a faulty router setting that caused internet issues worldwide.
