For some reason , I got a bug up my butt today about the haiku error messages from BeOS. When an app encountered an error, the user would get a little poem about it. For example, if you tried to get a web site that didn't exist, the web client (which was called NetPositive) would say something like:
Ephemeral page
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
There were a whole bunch of them, throughout the OS. I remembered installing BeOS 5 Personal Edition years ago and then just hitting reload on a non-existent URL like an idiot for like 30 minutes trying to see all the haiku. It was a small thing, but I thought it was a brilliant, elegant touch and typical of the entire operating system. It was inspired.
I decided that the BeOS haiku would make smashing 404 messages for this site as well.
Wanna see some haiku? Just go to any 404 page here. Try https://monkeygumbo.com/blahblah/ for example...
Click that "Back to entry..." link for more info.
Posted by wee at February 21, 2003 2:01 AMHey, I'm a fan of BeOS 404 messages also. I just wanted to make you aware that they don't show up in IE though, but I found this little tip:
Internet Explorer doesn't (by default) display custom error pages, preferring to display its own error message. If you would like to override this, you can put hidden text in the page to increase the filesize to just over 512 bytes; IE will then display your custom error page.
Thanks for the tip, Nick! I had no way of knowing that IE didn't respect 404 error pages. That doesn't surprise me, but it seems annoyingly unsurprising behavior for them. I added some junk as HTML comments so it comes up longer than 512 bytes.
Last time I used IE for anything substantive it had Spyglass Mosaic licensing stuff all over it. Sounds like I haven't missed out on much.
Posted by wee at June 18, 2003 12:42 AMFYI, works great now.
*REFRESH* *REFRESH* *REFRESH* just like old times :)
Posted by Nick Speare at June 18, 2003 5:36 AM