14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has recently released Edge 100, a major browser update that’s now live on all supported desktop platforms.
Just like Google Chrome, which has also reached version 100 earlier this week, the new version of Microsoft Edge introduces a three-digit user agent as well.
Microsoft warns the change could cause some problems on certain websites, with the company offering additional guidance for webmasters to deal with the whole thing.
“This may confuse scripts or server-side analytics that use a buggy parser to determine the User-Agent string version number. You can use the ForceMajorVersionToMinorPositionInUserAgent policy to control whether the User-Agent string major version should be frozen at 99. Also, the #force-major-version-to-minor flag is available in edge://flags to freeze the major version in the User-Agent string to 99,” the software giant explains.
More new features
Microsoft Edge 100 also introduces a new method to view a PDF file in a read-only preview, though this option is only available for Outlook desktop attachments or for documents stored locally and which you attempt to open from File Explorer.
Edge can also work with digitally-signed PDF files, with the browser now introducing hardware-enforced stack protection (which is only supported by Windows 8 and newer versions of Microsoft’s operating system).
“Microsoft Edge will continue supporting more fine-grained protection by combating memory corruption vulnerabilities and by protecting indirect calls. Hardware-enforced stack protection is only supported by Windows 8 and later. For more information, see Hardware-enforced Stack Protection. This feature behavior can be controlled using the ShadowStackCrashRollbackBehavior policy,” the software giant explains.
If you’re running Microsoft Edge, the new update should already be available in the browser. Needless to say, everybody is recommended to install the new version as soon as possible, though some may want to wait a little bit longer if they come across compatibility issues with their favorite websites due to the new user agent string.