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Space Invaders 404
- mbesto 13y agoNo, no it doesn't. It needs more useful 404 pages: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93641 http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
- milliams 13y agoIt can be both. But I agree with you that the useful stuff should be first and most prominent.
- cduser 13y agoEven Google doesn't follow it: http://www.google.com/alsfkj http://www.google.com/alsfkj
- australis 13y agoI'm trying to figure out if the '1' for the last character of the Google 404 error page is deliberate or accidental... pretty funny!!!!11!!1 (not)
- davidjohnstone 13y agoI always assumed it was deliberate. Ten years ago !!!!!1112threefour was a thing.
- 300bps 13y agoI'm guessing there's an engineer at Google responding to an alert of thousands of users across the world all attempting to load the same non-existent page on their servers.
- ars 13y agoAnd since HN is https they don't even get a referer to see where it came from.
- UnoriginalGuy 13y agoThat article doesn't really say that 404 pages should be useful. Their use is to tell the user that the page doesn't exist. As long as it communicates that in a way that users can understand (and returned a HTTP 404) it has done it's job. There was a fad for a little while around 2000 where people tried to make 404 pages which would "guess" which page you wanted to visit, search it, or make suggestions. Not only did these projects leave gaping security holes in many sites but they also seem to confuse many users more than if they had just been a roadblock (often resulting in users going around in circles). Plus, as another comment said, even Google doesn't follow Google's advice.
- Adirael 13y agoI usually perform a search using the data I can get from the URL. I usually get a category and some keyword (from the clean title URLs) so I can indicate that there's a 404 and then offer some related results doing a search. Angel
- mbesto 13y agoThe title (h2 tag even) is literally "Creating useful 404 pages"...
- GuiA 13y agoTo those wondering why the top answer says "No, no it doesn't."– the submission was originally titled "The internet needs more 404 pages like this"
- coherentpony 13y agoKeep your Alans on, it's just a 404 page.
- sambeau 13y agoIt depends on your definition of useful Did you ever fly a kite in bed? Did you ever walk with ten cats on your head? Did you ever milk this kind of cow? Well, we can do it. We know how. If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good. These things are fun and fun is good.
- masswerk 13y agoFirst, thanks for comments. Now, it's a perfect 404 page (Status 404 with simple message body, the game is injected by JS, so it's not registered by any crawlers.) For a better understanding, things that might not be clear for any direct-linked visitors: Most of the site's content is about classic computing in one way or the other. Also a main field of activity is in interactive web content (including a tradition in porting classic arcade games to JS). So it did make sense to offer an interactive error page, which is perfectly in tune with the main theme of the site. (So it's a perfect check for any item on the check list in the link referred to above.) Also it was meant as a humorous comment on interactivity, as you may either watch the interfering error being destructed to ruins (where the invaders would represent the site and the tank the user) or you could get even hands-on by "reaching trough" the error and interacting with the site (by shooting at it for being so dumb and lazy and not providing the right document). Also, the error page isn't exactly new, in fact it is as of March 2012. (Which is still quite fresh, considering that the design of the main pages is as of 1999. Yes, I'm a bit lazy with this. But at least there's a current error page.) [Edit] Just for info: An extra set of touch controls is injected, if a touch-enabled device is detected (supporting webkit/blink-style events or the ms-pointer-API as used by IE10). – For the benefit of SmartPhone- and tablet-users.
- Killah911 13y agoYou might end up getting more traffic to your 404 pages than your site. I just spent 5 minutes on the 404 page, haven't seen the contents of the actual site yet.
- nathan_long 13y agoIt sure would ruin any chance of error reporting based on hits to your 404 page
- munger 13y agoMeh, it's novel for about 10 seconds... But seriously, did you complete the level? I dabbled with it for about 10 seconds and then realized how long it would take and lost interest.
- lurkinggrue 13y agoI completed the level. You too young for the old arcades then?
- joezydeco 13y agoIt's really easy to complete when the invaders never drop down at the end of each line. Nice tribute to the game but fatally flawed.
- stuartcw 13y agoI completed 9 levels and decided to give it a rest.
- jontonsoup 13y agoOne of my sites has something similar!! (No one sees it though :( ) http://www.designedbyfd.com/404 http://www.designedbyfd.com/404
- UnoriginalGuy 13y agoYou forgot to tell users that it is a 404 page... Kind of 50% of the point of a 404 page (the other 50% being the status code which you do deliver).
- pseut 13y agoUnless it's been fixed in the 8 minutes since you posted, it does say 404 error in the graphic (in a thin font, though, so it's hard to see). I agree that it should be in the page title, be more visible, and explain what "404 error" means, though.
- UnoriginalGuy 13y agoI cannot see it. Might be an issue this side then. I see the asteroids floating around, and if I hit it I see a ship and can play an asteroids-like game.
- bink-lynch 13y agoIt's just before you hit the space bar to begin playing the game, "404 Error! Press space to start," then it goes away. I missed it too until I saw your comment, then I went back and checked.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ionwake 13y agomay use a version of this for my crappy website? can I fork it? Thanks = )
- aren55555 13y agohttp://hakim.se/experiments/html5/404/netmag.html http://hakim.se/experiments/html5/404/netmag.html
- curiousdannii 13y agoI'm always amazed by Hakim's stuff!
- ywang0414 13y agoThanks for helping me wasting 10 mins of my life :)
- joslin01 13y agoProblem is that when you get a 404, you're typically expecting something else. A game isn't going to change your entire plan and distract you for 10 minutes. Wait.. this is the internet, that is what will happen! Genius!
- ggreer 13y agoI have a weakness for hexagons: https://floobits.com/404 https://floobits.com/404 The 403 and 500 pages are a little more aggressive: https://floobits.com/static/403.html https://floobits.com/static/403.html https://floobits.com/static/500.html https://floobits.com/static/500.html I think I've picked a nice combination of utility and aesthetics. The game on masswerk.at's 404 page is pretty cool, but I could see it being a little distracting or confusing for some users.
- aptwebapps 13y agoI'm not sure if it's deliberate, or if my memory is accurate, but that reminds me a lot of the 'access denied' bit at the end of 'Lawnmower Man'.
- ggreer 13y agoActually, I was inspired by Evangelion. I've never seen The Lawnmower Man.
- curiousdannii 13y agoIf the internet was Evangelion, there wouldn't be many humans left to page.
- basicallydan 13y ago500: "A HUMAN HAS BEEN PAGED" I hope not. The poor pager will run out of batteries after a flood of HN users.
- ggreer 13y agoIt's just the html served for the real 500 page. The HTTP response code is 200. Real internal server errors do trigger a page though.
- bitwize 13y agoIt reminds me of the final scenes from The Lawnmower Man.
- bpierre 13y agoThe 404 page on scri.ch (drawing tool I made with a friend) is a drawing like any other on the website (you can draw on it, save it again, etc.), except the HTTP status: http://scri.ch/- http://scri.ch/-
- graue 13y agoThis is cool, but it badly needs an erase feature. Also, setting a title/permalink for the finished drawing would be nice. Any plans to develop it more?
- bpierre 13y agoThanks! Feel free to submit an issue [1], everything can be discussed, but the absence of an erasing tool (or any other tool) is a strong feature for us and our users. [1] https://github.com/lisezmoi/scri.ch/issues https://github.com/lisezmoi/scri.ch/issues
- graue 13y agoAh, it's intentionally minimalist. That's cool too. Perhaps a small, unobtrusive link to about.scri.ch to explain the philosophy would be in order then.
- rca 13y agoYup the web seems to be full of those. http://thefiletree.com/404 http://thefiletree.com/404
- alxndr 13y agoWhoa, that game is a blast!
- davidjgraph 13y agoYou bastard, I have a deadline and you post me this?
- trjordan 13y agoHow familiar! https://appneta.tv.appneta.com/nathoeusntaheous https://appneta.tv.appneta.com/nathoeusntaheous OK, fine, not interactive, but still familiar.
- masswerk 13y agoDon't forget that this page isn't exactly new. Around since March 2012. (See: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113952620110664554186/posts/bak12igQ969 https://plus.google.com/u/0/113952620110664554186/posts/bak1... )
- basicallydan 13y ago:D Another one: http://snowpool.org/tgescg http://snowpool.org/tgescg Disclaimer: It's a fork of a game I made.
- quackerhacker 13y agoAwesome 404! If you don't have time to make a game, then you can always RickRoll ur users... totally kidding :)
- justinhj 13y agoI amused myself with a grumpy cat 404 http://heyes-jones.com/404 http://heyes-jones.com/404
- tieTYT 13y agoThis seems to be done with divs and dom manipulation. Anyone know why they didn't use HTML5 canvas for this? I'm curious because I'm currently making an HTML5 canvas game.
- dspillett 13y agoIs it compatible with pre-canvas browsers (legacy IE and so forth)? That could be a valid reason particularly if it was written a while ago.
- tieTYT 13y agoSure, that's a valid reason. I guess I should have stated the intent of my question: Am I going down a bad path by trying to make my game with canvas when I could be doing it with a bunch of divs like this page?
- shmerl 13y agoArguably, canvas should be more optimized for gaming. Especially with the use of WebGL and etc.
- dspillett 13y agoFor writing a new game I'd go Canvas generally. It will perform far better in many cases, will often be easier to develop/maintain, and supporting legacy IE and older mobile browsers is just going to drain your time for little gain. Of course your target audience, if you have a more specific market in mind, may make another decision for you!
- masswerk 13y agoExactly.
- webstuff 13y agoHere is another HTML5 space invaders game http://www.webdigi.co.uk/fun/space/ http://www.webdigi.co.uk/fun/space/ You can also control this with your iPhone! (Socket.io/nodejs)
- zethraeus 13y agoFurther sass: you can click the title to change the error code, and it talks down to you a bit if you enter 666. There might be other fun ones too.
- thoughtpalette 13y agoInteresting when you change shotSpeed var to 50, only the middle row registers being hit, and when it's 100, none of the invaders register hits. Pretty fun :}
- masswerk 13y agobad boy hacker! ;-)
- thoughtpalette 13y agoI was just frustrated at the low fire rate :P
- stuartcw 13y agoHow to win. Get in the middle of the 0 and drill a small hole with your own missiles up through the 0. From now on you will be safe and most of your shots initially will hit an invader. Once you get down to the last one it is a matter of timing. If they break through the 0 and you are in danger, move under another safer part and drill a hole again.