How (!not) to make a 404 page | Hacker News Reader

How (!not) to make a 404 page

bloomberg.com

62 pointswiresurfer23 comments

What? Bloomberg's 404 pages are awesome! Also see http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/404

Their 500 pages are just as wacky:

http://www.bloomberg.com/500 http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/500

I totally agree. Why shouldn't they be allowed to have any personality? At least they explicitly show "This is an error page".

Criticisms you could make include:

* Frivolous about an error that's probably annoying to the audience. Not a major issue imo.

* Website Feedback link is relatively difficult to spot (but there, grey and in footer).

* Search option is relatively difficult to spot (but there, black and top right).

* Heavy (2.7MB) for a page which needs to load quickly. Not an issue for Bloomberg with their slick CDN but bad practice for most. The bulk of that is the .gif (http://cdn.gotraffic.net/business/public/images/bbiz404.3020..., c.1.6MB)

Criticisms I would actually make include:

* uh. I feel stupid for laughing so hard at it? I mean, really, it's pretty silly.

Yeah, if Jakob Nielsen reviewed it, he would damn it to hell. But I'm happy that even on some big corporate sites, there's a glimmer of the wackiness of the early internet shining through instead of the pseudo-wackiness that seems to be the current trend.

Exactly, it looks pretty authentic, so much different than the politically correct fabricated PR/Marketing/Geekiness that's everywhere now.

A 1.6MB simple .gif animation is a bit unexpected - I was thinking there would be some new HTML5 tech involved (WebGL?) But as bloated as it is, it was probably the best way to make something that works on just about any browser.

I'd add a concern that the animation can probably also induce motion sickness in some people.

I agree 100%, its nice to see a big place with some personality.

He said he liked it: "How not not to make a 404 page" ;-)

@mahouse, i edited the description in light of the new information. What he pointed out here was perfectly right (at that time instant)

Haha nice. It definitely was just one "not" when I posted!

That first 500 one is insane. I could watch it all day.

hey james, Thanks for pointing this out. this indeed is awesome!

This was posted here 9 days ago => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9013890.

Consensus is that Bloomberg's 404 and 500 pages are quite awesome.

As a vehicle for getting word of their site redesign out its clearly been pretty effective. I mean I literally learned Bloomberg redesigned their website from an art blog of all places, and this is the second time its been on the HN front page now. This is a 'how', not a 'how not'.

I totally agree @at_10. Have updated the title to reflect that.

I can already see Error-Page-As-A-Service as the next big business model.

Status pages as a service already exist.

If it hadn't been like this for a while, I honestly would have thought that bloomberg.com had been hacked and defaced. Consider this recent article about Radio Shack: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-02/inside-rad...

It's probably down to Bloomberg hiring this guy: http://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-hires-bi-executive-...

The new site is a visual abomination with articles having titles designed as link-bait, similar in style to Business Insider.

No it's not because of that hire--the devs at Bberg are just an interesting, surprisingly eclectic, smart bunch.

The new layout... there were discussions about that after it launched. I was also opposed.

WTF...! It's Awesome! WTF happens to the avatar though? It looks like it's going to jump but then falls to pieces. I wouldn't say this is the best way to display a 404 page, however I agree it's nice to see a big corporation making light of an error.

OP here Didn't know they had a panache for awesomely creepy Error pages. Seems to fit in with their personality, in which case, the title of the post is my bad.

Anyways, I came across this while trying to resolve their archive page links, which seems to be broken, possibly after they changed everything to businessweek.com Although a small tweak to the url can get you to the article, a better tweak takes you to this gem of a 404! :)

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