Attack of the Double Digit Version Numbers

Operas' next major release, which should be version ten, will instead be called version 9.8 and have a real version number appended to the end of the user-agent string.

So instead of

We're going to see strings such as


Apparently the reason behind this is that Opera during Alpha testing has been using the user-agent that would make sense. However they have received numerous reports of sites which use browser sniffing thinking that it is an Opera 1 visitor because the sniffer is only checking the first digit of the version number.

Some of these sites have been refusing to serve any content at all to Opera 10 users.

If Microsoft doesn't abandon IE development for years at a time between now and IE10 they're likely to face the same problem. I get the feeling sites will be getting fixed around Microsoft when this happens there though. Maybe we just have to wait for IE to hit that magic double digit mark before sanity comes back to Operas versioning system.

Geez, it's bad enough that they won't develop their own stuff to standards, but it's worse that they are the one's who control when modifications are made to handle things like this. *shakes head*

I don't think its the browser maker's fault (or issue to fix) if people won't write future proof code...

Good point. There's certainly some lazy programming at the core of the issue. Or perhaps some tunnel vision. I'm sure that whoever knows won't be saying out loud.