Curtis Bartley’s Blog

404 Error Page Status

Feature Description

We want Firefox to override server-supplied 404 error pages in certain cases.  The Firefox 404 page should provide the user with tools we think are more useful to the user for resolving the situation, than the server supplied page.  This includes alternate ("did you mean") URLs derived from the Places database and some pre-loaded search links/controls.  This is being tracked in bug 482874.

Status

Final work was delayed while I worked on about:support/Troubleshooting Information.  Since then I've rewritten the Places part of the patch in JavaScript as requested in the most recent code review.  I still have some L10N issues to address and some general touch up.

Next Steps

    Pinky: "Gee Brain, what do you want to do next week?"
    The Brain: "The same thing we do every week, Pinky—try to land this patch!"

Notes

• The feature is controlled by a pref so it can be turned off.
• Webmasters who don't want their 404 error pages to be overridden may have to add padding to their 404 error pages.  However, since IE and Google Chrome are already overriding 404 error pages using a similar size test, webmasters already need to do this.
• We want to provide a way for the user to see the original 404 error page, but that's not in this patch.