Hi, On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 08:04:20PM -0700, TheMaTrIx wrote: > Is it, in your opinions, "nice", "appropriate" and "correct", in other > words, ethical, for an internet site to setup 404 pages so that when > for instance: > > http://www.domain.com/banana/ > > that doesn't exist, gets called, the user gets a 404 page inline with > the sites main layout + a bunch of suggestions for pages that might > fit what the user was looking for, like there are pages relevant to > banana at > > http://www.domain.com/recipies/milkshakes/banana > http://www.domain.com/gallery/dancingbanana > http://www.domain.com/music/RotterdamTerrorCorps/bananenlied > > Kinda like automated search results appended to the 404's.
I've had this talk with co-workers before, too. My take on it is this: * If you don't have what the user is looking for, you should return a 404 status code. * There's nothing wrong with including additional information in the HTTP response body that may help the user find what he's looking for. * If your 404 page is overly complicated, it may not be immediately obvious to the user that an "error" condition has occured. This can be confusing, and should probably be avoided. Does that sound reasonable to other folks? -Forest -- Forest Bond http://www.alittletooquiet.net
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