> * More informative Error Pages. > As a general usability feature, I thoroughly approve of the more > friendly error pages in IE7. That way, when your site's server goes > down, people won't just be dumped with a nasty pile of technical text.
So long as these are restricted to "server not available" scenarios, that's fine. However when IE overrides informative errors sent out by the server, things become a real pain (does IE7 always respect server errors?). For example, at work we include a contact form in our 404 response; IE users don't always get it so they can't report the link nor get an email alerting them when the problem is fixed. I've also received quite a few emails from users who were clued in enough to take a screenshot of a problem, but unfortunately IE's "friendly" message put the server status code way down the bottom, below the fold and as a result not in the screenshot! We had to go back and ask them to send the details again - was it a 404? a 503? something else? Still, the friendly message is probably more reassuring to users *if they read it* :) Ben -- --- <http://www.200ok.com.au/> --- The future has arrived; it's just not --- evenly distributed. - William Gibson ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
