PSA: Triple Tantrum - Google and Mozilla are getting ready for Chrome and Firefox version 100 to break some websites

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Chrome, Firefox, and Edge are about to hit version 100, in a triple release that could break some websites. The move to version 100 in the coming weeks could result in bugs or compatibility issues on some websites not ready to read triple-digit user-agent strings. Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft are busy trying preempt any big issues.

 

Quotes

Quote

Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft have been warning about the upcoming version 100 release for months, which is about to drop in March for both Chrome and Edge, followed by Firefox in May. Mozilla and Google have both been running experiments to test websites and report breakages. There’s a running list of issues, which is fairly small right now, and Engadget notes that the notable sites affected include HBO Go, Bethesda, and Yahoo.

“When browsers first reached version 10 a little over 12 years ago, many issues were discovered with User-Agent parsing libraries as the major version number went from one digit to two,” explains a team of web developers in a Mozilla blog.

While there are concerns around some websites breaking, a lot of hard work has been going on behind the scenes — much like what happened to avoid major headaches with the Y2K bug 22 years ago — to make the transition to version 100 go smoothly. Developers can enable a special flag in current versions of Chrome, Edge, and Firefox to make the browsers report as version 100 and aid in testing sites.

There are also plans in place if there are widespread issues. Mozilla says it will either hot fix broken websites or temporarily freeze Firefox’s major version at 99 if breakages are widespread and unmanageable. Google’s backup plan is to use a flag to freeze the major version at 99, and Microsoft hasn’t detailed a backup plan as far as we can tell.

 

My thoughts

 Well, It's apparently the year of Computing pains. Now it's possible that parts of the internet will break as with the y2k bug and others like it. It's unlikely you'll notice it as these major companies are taking steps to prevent this nightmare from coming to pass. So, uhh, Just be aware and hopefully this will be a non-issue by the time v100 releases.

 

Sources

TheVerge

Engadget

Known issues - Github

Mozilla Blog

[wanderingfool2]

It really surprises me that someone would write a library that just parses the string as 2 digits.  I feel that this will overall be a non-issue.  Major sites will work, and for those sites that don't (and won't be updated, say internal ones)...well people will just find a way around it.  I know in the past a website the company I worked for scraped certain websites (to adjust pricing), and when they moved things to an annoying format we just used an addon to report our strings as an older version (and it went back to displaying things the old way).  Same thing I bet will happen here.

[AbydosOne]

57 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Chrome, Firefox, and Edge are about to hit version 100, in a triple release that could break some websites.

What neat features are we getting? Gotta break a few eggs, as they say!...

 

57 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

The move to version 100 in the coming weeks could result in bugs or compatibility issues on some websites not ready to read triple-digit user-agent strings.

oh... it's the whole "Windows 9x" thing all over again...

[justpoet]

At this point, this far into standards, I don't think any website should be worried about version numbers anymore.  If a site is broken or doesn't support a feature due to a decision not to support a browser or to not test with older browser versions, it is broken and doesn't support a feature.  Users need to be updated anyway to avoid serious security risks.  Maybe do this like encryption standards do, where a list of html/xml/css/js versions can be requested or presented instead if needed.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Summary

Chrome, Firefox, and Edge are about to hit version 100, in a triple release that could break some websites. The move to version 100 in the coming weeks could result in bugs or compatibility issues on some websites not ready to read triple-digit user-agent strings. Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft are busy trying preempt any big issues.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

 Well, It's apparently the year of Computing pains. Now it's possible that parts of the internet will break as with the y2k bug and others like it. It's unlikely you'll notice it as these major companies are taking steps to prevent this nightmare from coming to pass. So, uhh, Just be aware and hopefully this will be a non-issue by the time v100 releases.

 

Sources

TheVerge

Engadget

Known issues - Github

Mozilla Blog

That's what version inflation causes. This is also why Windows skipped version 9

 

What the user agent should have been sending is "HTML5 (YEAR;Web Browser)" and omitting the entire browser string. A site can make a distinction between say, an RSS reader and a web browser, but not the fact that it's a web browser and another web browser. I've even changed my web browser string to this before, and sure enough there are sites (like gmail) that will fallback to a "your browser doesn't support this" page, or revert to functionality from early 2000's.

 

A lazy/sloppy web developer relies on the user agent for functionality. Probe the DOM if you need a function that might be missing in crappy browsers.

[HarryNyquist]

49 minutes ago, Kisai said:

A lazy/sloppy web developer relies on the user agent for functionality. Probe the DOM if you need a function that might be missing in crappy browsers.

Probing DOM does not tell you if the user is visiting from a desktop/mobile device. Screen width doesn't either.

 

Even the proposed "official" way of checking is still using User-Agent in the background. (And note how poor the support is for it too)

NavigatorUAData.mobile - Web APIs | MDN (mozilla.org)

Navigator API: userAgentData | Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc

[Kisai]

10 minutes ago, HarryNyquist said:

Probing DOM does not tell you if the user is visiting from a desktop/mobile device. Screen width doesn't either.

 

Even the proposed "official" way of checking is still using User-Agent in the background. (And note how poor the support is for it too)

NavigatorUAData.mobile - Web APIs | MDN (mozilla.org)

Navigator API: userAgentData | Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc

You should be designing your site to work on ALL devices. Not using browser-extensions. The only reason you should care if it's mobile or desktop is if it doesn't have an on screen keyboard. 

 

[Quackers101]

becomes 01

[HarryNyquist]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

You should be designing your site to work on ALL devices. Not using browser-extensions. The only reason you should care if it's mobile or desktop is if it doesn't have an on screen keyboard. 

Yeah, because adding a pass to a mobile wallet will work on every device because there's a single standard for that-- oh wait, right, there isn't. In fact, there isn't even anything close to it.

 

You can only code your website to have responsive design based on screen dimensions. Until the web and its browsers support a standard of identification for mobile/deskop, any site that has platform-specific features will be required to do identification based on user-agent . There is literally no other option.

[Fnige]

4 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

sites affected include HBO Go, Bethesda, and Yahoo

of fucking course

[dilpickle]

I wonder if Chrome is regretting this silly version number race they started and Mozilla followed. Jumping an entire number for every tiny bug fix. Realistically they should be in the 20s at most.

[Quackers101]

Just now, dilpickle said:

I wonder if Chrome is regretting this silly version number race they started and Mozilla followed.

why do these companies have to mirror or copy each other like this.

Until they want to do a change that will break everything, for their own standards to be used.

[dilpickle]

1 minute ago, Quackers101 said:

why do these companies have to mirror or copy each other like this.

Same reason why Microsoft called their second console Xbox360 instead of Xbox2. PS3 vs Xbox2. Which one do you think people are more likely to buy.

 

The only good thing about the version escalation is that it encourages people to update more. If your year old browser was version 10.1.4 and the latest version is 10.2.5 you might think you're already on the latest major version so its all good. Meanwhile there might have been a dozen critical updates in that time. But if your version is 24 and the latest is 67 you are going to feel way behind.

[Doobeedoo]

So really modern and popular websites won't see an issue. In a way feels like how some depend on old IE to function.

[Kisai]

18 hours ago, dilpickle said:

The only good thing about the version escalation is that it encourages people to update more. If your year old browser was version 10.1.4 and the latest version is 10.2.5 you might think you're already on the latest major version so its all good. Meanwhile there might have been a dozen critical updates in that time. But if your version is 24 and the latest is 67 you are going to feel way behind.

Not really. Do you really care what the version number is? Ever since software started obsessively auto-updating itself, even at inconvenient times (I don't know  how many times a stupid piece of software will not work unless you download the worthless update -right now-, eg spotify, discord, teams, slack, steam, epic, etc, etc) At least software on steam has the decency to not start the download while you're playing a game.

 

But everyone else, either organize yourself so your programs update using the OS updater so that your updates are done in the background when the application is closed or upon a reboot, or update seamlessly when the software restarts.

 

This kind of thing below is annoying as hell. I need to do one thing with the app, right now, which will take a minute, but the nag to update breaks my workflow, and if I tell it to update right now, it will take several minutes and administrative access:

 

And these are not even the worst offenders. These are just the ones that seem to update so frequently, that it's ALWAYS begging to be updated, despite the update not being something I need "right now".

 

Discord and Steam at least don't force you to update the application "right now", but they then feel the need to tell you about all the recent changes you don't have to time to read right now before you can continue using it. What version is Steam or Discord on? I don't know. I don't care. Unless your update fundamentally changes a security thing I need to be aware about, I don't need to know "right now". New features? Good for you, I don't care, I'll follow your twitter if I'm interested in the software feature creep.

 

[Mark Kaine]

oh, ok… so does renaming the google update exe still work, or should I disable the service?

 

 

6 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

So really modern and popular websites won't see an issue

So it will affect almost everything? That's even worse than i thought ! 

[LAwLz]

53 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

oh, ok… so does renaming the google update exe still work, or should I disable the service?

Renaming the exe won't do anything. Websites determine browser version by looking at your user agent string. 

You can change it in the developer menu, or with an extension. But my guess is that you don't have anything to worry about.

 

 

  

23 hours ago, dilpickle said:

I wonder if Chrome is regretting this silly version number race they started and Mozilla followed. Jumping an entire number for every tiny bug fix. Realistically they should be in the 20s at most.

The version number does not really go up whenever they fix a bug. It goes up at a linear and predetermined phase.

Chrome(ium) has a new minor release every 2-3 weeks, and a new major release every 4 weeks (used to be 6 until last year).

 

Regardless of how many or few bugs that gets fixed, or changes that gets made, Chrome version 100 will be released 4 weeks after Chrome version 99 was released. Chrome version 101 will be released 4 weeks after Chrome 100 was released, and so on.

 

Chrome 96 - released 2021-11-15

Chrome 97 - released 2022-01-04

Chrome 98 - Released 2022-02-01

Chrome 99 - Will be released 2022-03-1

Chrome 100 - Will be released 2022-03-29

...

Chrome 200 - Will be released 2029-10-19 (unless Google changes their release schedule).

[RejZoR]

Whoever was the idiot who turned minor versions into this big number for every little change fuckery should be castrated with a rusty spoon. So we don't have this idiocy repeat itself ever again. Because version numbers are hard, even though we've used them basically for as long as computers exist...

[Mark Kaine]

54 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Renaming the exe won't do anything. Websites determine browser version

no i meant to prevent google from updating… 

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

google update exe

 

edit: welp that made me try it… and yes, it does exactly  what it's supposed to:

Oopsie! ; )

 

Of course, jokes on me if that already *is* the new update cause i already updated a few days ago!? 

[duncannah]

This issue is really blown out of proportion. User agent parsing is not that common anymore, and even then, most parsing libraries aren't prone to this issue. The worst case scenario is a webpage serving the wrong version by default (and there's usually a way to override that anyway).

[Mark Kaine]

7 minutes ago, duncannah said:

This issue is really blown out of proportion. User agent parsing is not that common anymore, and even then, most parsing libraries aren't prone to this issue. The worst case scenario is a webpage serving the wrong version by default (and there's usually a way to override that anyway).

Honestly Im just pissed because the last update made chrome way more convoluted, you know, exactly  the settings where you turn off 3rd party cookies etc, require several more clicks now, and overall  it just looks worse, kinda like the "new" windows taskmanager, eww.