11 ms·
Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly
- nathan82 16y agoView the source. All the css is inlined, the images are base64 encoded, and there's no closing tag. That's one efficient 404!
- rimantas 16y agoAlso: href=//www.google.com/ Title is funny :) I think they could drop margin:0; padding:0 from css, default values in browsers won't change much for this type of page anyway.
- tuxcanfly 16y ago`//www.google.com` will automatically translate the url to http/https depending on the requested protocol.
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoYup, that way of doing it is protocol-agnostic.
- etherealG 16y agois this officially accepted syntax? does it work in all browsers? (I'd really love both these answers to be yes so I can start doing this on my sites)
- davidu 16y agoWhich is interesting since Google doesn't serve a 404 over HTTPS as far as I can tell.
- lancefisher 16y agoTry this: https://mail.google.com/asdfasdf https://mail.google.com/asdfasdf
- corin_ 16y agoBut they're clearly doing their best to minimise file size, and so using // cuts down on a few characters.
- windsurfer 16y agoWell maybe they will...?
- stanleydrew 16y agoNone of the html attribute values are quoted either.
- cstuder 16y agoOne image is inline, the other is a conventional file. I wonder why. Oh, and it validates indeed: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.google.com/notauasdfadf;No200=1 http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.google.com/nota...
- rodh 16y agoMaybe that logo is used elsewhere, and there's a high likelihood for that logo to be in the user's cache.
- estel 16y agoThe other image, the logo, is probably generic enough that it's used elsewhere and a user is likely to have it cached. The other looks bespoke for this page, so wouldn't.
- pbhjpbhj 16y agoI don't understand how it validates - I'd always understood that html, head, [title] and body were required for a complete document. Certainly the draft spec at http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/semantics.html#the-html-element-0 http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/semantics.html#the-html-element-0 appears to confirm this ... Fairplay to them though, they got a semantically and structurally deficient document to validate - it's like the IE6 of webpages ;0)
- nostrademons 16y agoThe elements are required, but the tags are implied by the tag structure of the rest of the document. They're added automatically at parse time: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/tokenization.html#the-before-html-insertion-mode http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/tokenization.html#the-before-html...
- pbhjpbhj 16y agoThat's a strange version of "required". Basically the elements are not required in a document until parse time at which point they are inserted following an extremely arduously defined algorithm. It seems bizarre to me that you wouldn't simply define the location of meta elements strictly as being in the head but instead define that should the parser find them they should be wrapped in to a head element. On a brief view it looks like one can just drop a meta tag, say, in anywhere in the document and the parser has to move this to the head element? I didn't realise that they were encouraging tag soup; this isn't part of the spec I've seen before. This sort of complex parsing algo wasn't in XHTML1.X or HTML4.X was it?
- reedlaw 16y agoDoes every browser support base64 encoded images embedded in css?
- beaumartinez 16y agoI don't think the older ones do; however, I'm sure Google gives them a different 404 page (change your User-Agent to IE6 and see how different the search results HTML is).
- joshfinnie 16y agoWe unfortunate users of IE6 get the new 404 page as well. I assume they just gave up on IE6 like most of the web-world has.
- treeface 16y agoYep here's what I see on our IE6 death machine: http://i.imgur.com/bTXtn.png http://i.imgur.com/bTXtn.png
- elliottcarlson 16y agoWhich could be another indication why the Google logo itself is linked (besides it being in cache as well). The page degrades well imho in IE6 - the lack of the cutsey robot isn't essential to the page - the logo however is.
- cstuder 16y agoAlmost every browser. Guess which ones don't. (I'll give you a hint: It's MSIE 6 and 7.) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme#Web_browser_support http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme#Web_browser_sup...
- kpreid 16y agoBase64 isn't exactly efficient. (Though it might be more efficient than an additional HTTP request. But if so, why aren't they using it for the homepage logo, say?) I wonder if they're using it as non-useless padding for stopping the IE-overrides-too-short-404s behavior.
- visural 16y agoBase64 is ok when the response is gzipped
- tnorthcutt 16y ago<title>Error 404 (Not Found)!!1</title>
- xbryanx 16y agoHa!1 Nice to know that even the almighty at Google are prone to some typos every once and a while.
- tnorthcutt 16y agoPretty sure it's not a typo ;)
- m_myers 16y agoDefinitely a typo. They left out a "one" at the end.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Matt_Cutts 16y agoWhat makes you think that's a typo? We're not allowed a bit of humor every so often? :)
- nrbafna 16y agoIntentional typo. You could get a 404 by mistyping the URL and hence it fits.
- kgermino 16y agoA part of me is sad about this. The old page functioned just fine and acted as a relic of the old Internet. I thought it was kind of cool how they left it alone, especially since it served it's purpose just fine without costing anything. Not that I'm denying it was ugly as all hell :)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- alanh 16y agoAwkward verbiage.
- nitinsingla 16y agoyea typo in the title !!1,
- bostonpete 16y agoI think it's intended as a joke.
- siddhant 16y agoI liked the older one better - http://www.google.com/tisp/notfound.html http://www.google.com/tisp/notfound.html You might have typed the URL incorrectly, for instance. Or (less likely but certainly plausible) we might have coded the URL incorrectly. Or (far less plausible, but theoretically possible, depending on which ill-defined Grand Unifying Theory of physics one subscribes to), some random fluctuation in the space-time continuum might have produced a shatteringly brief but nonetheless real electromagnetic discombobulation which caused this error page to appear.
- sahillavingia 16y agoJust FYI, that wasn't their actual one, but the 404 for their April Fool's joke: http://www.google.com/tisp/ http://www.google.com/tisp/
- edw519 16y agoI like Yahoo's better: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkenning/464845773/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkenning/464845773/
- jules 16y agoReddit's is cute too: http://allthatsnew.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/reddit.png?w=480&h=352 http://allthatsnew.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/reddit.png?w=...
- andrewingram 16y agoGiven the size of Google, I wonder if there was a whole team tasked with this development. A 404 page for a company as big as Google is an awfully big responsibility for just one person :) To be honest, I prefer the idea of a more intelligent 404 page. You'd think Google would have sufficient horsepower to make a good guess at what you might have been trying to find.
- citricsquid 16y agoThis was something I was thinking too. I watched a video from Matt Cutts yesterday where he mentioned they have a "team" (I guess it could just be 2 people, but it sounds like more) who are entirely dedicated to parsing 404 pages that return 200 response codes. I too wonder if they had a team just for this, or maybe they have a "usability" team who were tasked with this?
- elliottcarlson 16y agoThis would be a completely different thing though - parsing 404 error pages that incorrectly return a status 200 OK could cause broken links to appear as duplicate content when crawled. Didn't think about this before but I am sure this does require q dedicated team to be able to distinguish this kind of content.
- yror10 16y agoThis is already shown by the rareness of a google 404. You hardly ever get it these days. Except if a server crashes for about 1 second, (where my preference would be "you are the lucky winner to click your mouse at the same second as our server crash!"
- cakeforcerberus 16y agoMaking the new 404 HTML page was probably someone's "20% project" for a year.
- yror10 16y agoI've heard about the 20% things but look a the page and ask yourself. Anyone could have made that in 5 minutes + maybe a week for discussion.
- absconditus 16y agoWho cares? What interesting discussion is there to be had about this?
- jedsmith 16y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279949 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279949 is a start.
- bradgessler 16y agoGoogle has been really been stepping up their design over the past few months. I really like the subtle tweaks they made to the top bar across all google pages: https://img.skitch.com/20110302-kdhkc99usamdhb6yaptrw2y81d.jpg https://img.skitch.com/20110302-kdhkc99usamdhb6yaptrw2y81d.j...
- ZoFreX 16y agoThis hasn't rolled out for everybody yet - I see it at work, but I don't see it (when signed into the same account) at home.
- AdamTReineke 16y agoCache issue? I see it on my account regardless of where I sign in.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Griever 16y agoSame thing happens to me. I'm assuming its a cookie or cache issue.
- wisty 16y agoAB testing, I'd guess.
- yror10 16y agoIt is on google.com but most of the other country domains (.ie, .co.uk, etc...) havent got it yet. Currently its the same with google instant.
- patrickk 16y agoI'm on .ie and I have it: http://i52.tinypic.com/2cf8kdh.jpg http://i52.tinypic.com/2cf8kdh.jpg I only noticed a friend with it on his account last week. The next time I singed into my account it came up, and it's been there ever since.
- jeffbarr 16y ago> "That's all we know." Not true. They know the sub-domain and the path. Either or both could be used to do something more intelligent.
- staunch 16y agoThey could use The Google 404 search widget thingie. <script type="text/javascript"> var GOOG_FIXURL_LANG = 'en'; var GOOG_FIXURL_SITE = 'http://www.google.com' </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://linkhelp.clients.google.com/tbproxy/lh/wm/fixurl.js> </script>
- nicklovescode 16y agothat page also has no body tag
- dmaz 16y agoThe response says the server is "sffe". It seems to be used for static web hosting on android.com and providing HTTP error codes for other sites. I'm guessing it's running on the edge servers, but Google hasn't publicized what it is, that I could find.
- joshmanders 16y agoLove it. Especially the changes they have been making. Keeping Google's signature simplicity, but also adding a little modern look. to it. Kudos to Goog.
- kamdar 16y agoGoogle should at least put search bar on 404 error page. Isn't that the most basic thing?
- moblivu 16y agoHaha, a nice simple error page! Still, nothing beats that one http://www.abovetopsecret.com/404.html http://www.abovetopsecret.com/404.html
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- gohat 16y agoThis is nice, but more developed, cutesy ones with animals and such are all the rage. Maybe they should ask the guy at The Oatmeal comic if he'd be willing to help; he did the Tumblr one for free iirc and it's fairly awesome.
- culturestate 16y agoHe did their 500, not their 404 I believe
- rlmw 16y agoDoes it matter whether 404 pages are ugly or not? I mean its a nice experience for a confused user, but I'd frankly rather it made suggestions as to similar urls that might exist, where possible.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ewanr 16y ago"That’s all we know." but is it 'useful' ?
- kaisdavis 16y agoAnd the page doesn't include a search bar?
- mikeivanov 16y agoIs that Salo?
- joetek 16y agoSo, the new 404 page isn't really useful. They could maybe add some links to help people find what they were looking for. Maybe someone at Google should take a look at these very helpful tips on what to include on a 404 page: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?&answer=93641 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?&...
- sliverstorm 16y agoI personally prefer the simple, simple, simple 404 pages. Like, a lot.
- kordless 16y agoCheck out ours: http://loggly.com/404 http://loggly.com/404
- Luyt 16y agoAnd I created this one: http://access-training-amsterdam.nl/xyzzy http://access-training-amsterdam.nl/xyzzy ...abandoned in the desert...
- NovaDesu 16y agoThis is mine, http://demontunes.com/asdasd http://demontunes.com/asdasd poor fly
- Groxx 16y agoAww, typing "skedaddle" doesn't skedaddle :(
- marcamillion 16y agoSo what is the key take away here ? When you launch, as a matter of fact for the first 10 years, having a clever error page is not a "MUST-have". Prioritize! Btw, this comment is just as much for me as for the next guy.
- viviensin 16y agoI thought "That’s all we know." is cute because this is probably the only moment in Google's history to admit not being able to find/ know the reason why as a superpower search engine! =)