Should I override IE "friendly" 404 errors?

L

Leif K-Brooks

I plan to send 404 erorrs for all not found errors, including things
like forum posts. I think a lot of users would just leave if they got an
IE (or even Apache) 404 error when looking for a forum post. Should I
make my error handler larger to avoid IE's "friendly" error message, or
is it one of the browser "features" that should be left alone?
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Leif K-Brooks said:
Should I
make my error handler larger to avoid IE's "friendly" error message

Yes, if your error message is better.

Quite often people write 404 handlers that make the user see something
_less_ informative than IE's default "friendly" message - for some
users at least. I've seen far too many customized error pages that have
been written in a mysterious language, i.e. with no accompanying
explanation in English, and sometimes even without the magic string
"404", so that I can't even tell whether I've stumbled across an error
message or a normal page, without taking a crash course on Udmurt.

A little more about this:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/404.html
 
L

Long

:
: > Should I
: > make my error handler larger to avoid IE's "friendly" error message
:
: Yes, if your error message is better.
:
: Quite often people write 404 handlers that make the user see something
: _less_ informative than IE's default "friendly" message - for some
: users at least. I've seen far too many customized error pages that have
: been written in a mysterious language, i.e. with no accompanying
: explanation in English, and sometimes even without the magic string
: "404", so that I can't even tell whether I've stumbled across an error
: message or a normal page, without taking a crash course on Udmurt.
:
: A little more about this:
: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/404.html
:
A very informative page!

I am also trying to set response errors, such as 400, 401, 403, 500, 501 etc.
The response code is set depending on user actions. The problem is
the browser result is always a 404. It seems the location value does affect
the final web server response (i.e. the URI doesn't exist or not accessible).

My question is what should the location value be so that a correct error
page is displayed for the above error codes?

Thanks for any insight.

Regards,

Long
 
K

Kyle Fox

I plan to send 404 erorrs for all not found errors, including things
like forum posts. I think a lot of users would just leave if they got an
IE (or even Apache) 404 error when looking for a forum post. Should I
make my error handler larger to avoid IE's "friendly" error message, or
is it one of the browser "features" that should be left alone?

Generally if you return more than 512 bytes in an error page, IE will show
that rather than its "friendly" error page. Most good error pages are
bigger than 512 bytes.

- Kay
 
F

Firas D.

Jukka said:
Quite often people write 404 handlers that make the user see something
_less_ informative than IE's default "friendly" message - for some
users at least.

Indeed. I once came across one that loaded a skull in the background
that took forever to download over a dial-up connection. The text said
something about making a mistake, and ended, "WHERE'S YOUR MAMA NOW,
BITCH???!!!"
 

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