404s, Logging and SEF URLs [was Re: Pre 3.3 release ...]

Ok...here’s the problem with Internet Explorer and 404 errors. By default, Internet Explorer is set to show what it calls a "friendly HTTP error" message...meaning that it’ll show its own "page not found" error message instead of the one presented by the server. If you go to your Internet Options (Tools-->Internet Options) and click on the Advanced tab you’ll see an option labeled "Show friendly HTTP error messages". Turning this off will cause Internet Explorer to rely on the server itself to display any error messages rather than IE displaying its own message. Doing so will cause my little 404 fix to work properly.

Now, although this really sucks I honestly think that this fix is more important than allowing Internet Explorer to properly redirect regardless of whether the "Show friendly HTTP error messages" is on or off. Reason being is that, when you think about it, it’s pretty important for MODx to properly log a 404 error message to Apache. All my little fix does is force a 404 header followed by a header refresh to the custom error page...which is the behavior we want if Apache is to properly log any "Page not found" problems. The problem with Internet Explorer and 404’s would happen regardless on just about any application that reports a 404 in the header...it’s just beyond our control if the "Show friendly HTTP error messages" is set properly or not. Ugg!

<!--
- Unfortunately, Microsoft has added a clever new
- "feature" to Internet Explorer. If the text of
- an error’s message is "too small", specifically
- less than 512 bytes, Internet Explorer returns
- its own error message. You can turn that off,
- but it’s pretty tricky to find switch called
- "smart error messages". That means, of course,
- that short error messages are censored by default.
- IIS always returns error messages that are long
- enough to make Internet Explorer happy. The
- workaround is pretty simple: pad the error
- message with a big comment like this to push it
- over the five hundred and twelve bytes minimum.
- Of course, that’s exactly what you’re reading
- right now.
-->


I hope this helps, or I could be wrong

Quote from: rthrash at Oct 25, 2005, 02:05 PM

Raymond, can you offer an alternate solution that will work with IIS... or can this be a configuration flag so that folks that actually can get FURLs working on IIS don’t get an error. The 404 handling needs to be udpated in a big way.

Not at this point in time. The HTTP 404 headers is what’s cause IE to display a 404 error message. It’s not an IIS problem

Quote from: zi at Oct 26, 2005, 12:40 AM

I hope this helps, or I could be wrong

No, you’re pretty much right on the money. Internet Explorer pretty much doesn’t display the error from the server unless either the "Show friendly HTTP messages" option isn’t set for the error on the server is more than 512 bytes. The tricky part in this is figuring out a way to do this with PHP. At the moment, I’m using a header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found") line to push the 404. I’m sure if I play around with it I can push another header line just before it that will cause IE to think it has more than 512 bytes. Hmm....back to the drawing board! However, in the meantime, I still think my solution still works ok. We just need to remember that little workaround for IE until we find a more permanent solution.