[thelist] weird comment

Ken Schaefer Ken at adOpenStatic.com
Sat Dec 8 02:59:13 CST 2007


Internet Explorer will show a "friendly" error page if:
a) Show Friendly HTTP error messages is checked in IE
-and-
b) the error page returned by the server is less than a certain size (512 bytes, not 512kb)

I believe that the rationale is that 512 byte error pages tend to be pretty brief, and user unfriendly. If the user has "show friendly HTTP errors" on, then IE will substitute a different page that contains some explanation of what's going on (i.e. the page no longer exists, or you may have the URL wrong etc)

Cheers
Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Ken Snyder
Sent: Saturday, 8 December 2007 10:10 AM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] weird comment

Brian Cummiskey wrote:
> I happened to find the following comment in one of my client's source html:
>
>
> any validity to this, or is it an ie2 fix?
>
>
>
> <!-- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx END CONTENT
> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -->
> <!-- THE FOLLOWING COMMENT GARBAGE IS TO MAKE THE PAGE SIZE GREATER THAN
> 512KB -->
> <!-- SO EXPLORER WILL NOT SERVE UP ITS OWN 404 ERROR PAGE -->
> <!-- IT IS REPORTED THAT MICROSOFT WILL OVERRIDE A CUSTOM ERROR PAGE IF
> IT IS NOT-->
> <!-- BIG ENOUGH -->
> ...
>
It looks legit except for the fact that "512KB" should be "512 bytes":

http://www.404-error-page.com/404-error-page-too-short-problem-microsoft-ie.shtml

Apparently all error pages have a minimum size requirement for IE 4 - 6
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q218155/).

- Ken Snyder


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