[WEB4LIB] RE: 404 page -> hooray for Harvey Mudd College

[Richard Wiggins]

The article George cites has lots of nice examples.  One site they mention
is Harvey Mudd College, which has a clever dynamic Error 404 page that
includes clickable versions of the URL in error with each directory level
"trimmed" from the right.  This is a simple trick but it could be very
useful for users.  A standard technique for savvy users is doing this by
hand; it's nice to offer the trimmed URLs as hyperlinks.

Try this URL to see what I mean:

http://www.hmc.edu/fee/fi/fo/fum/foo

(You may have to scroll down a bit.)

By the way, I think it's much better to leave the URL in error in the
browser Location field, rather than redirecting to another standard page. 
If the "wrong" URL remains, the user can repair minor errors in the URL
caused by transcription errors (for instance caused by copying too much text
while copy/pasting).

/rich
------Original Message------
From: George Porter <george at library.caltech.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: August 25, 2000 7:53:19 PM GMT
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: 404 page


Brian Kelly produced a tour de force article in Ariadne last year on just
this topic <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue20/404/>.  It is well worth the
reading, and implementing, for the benefit of your website and its visitors.

George S. Porter
Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering & Applied Science
Caltech, 1-43
Pasadena, CA  91125-4300
Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681

Richard Wiggins
Consulting, Writing & Training on Internet Topics
www.netfact.com/rww         wiggins at mail.com
517-349-6919 (home office)  517-353-4955 (work)  
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