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Comment by xandrius

3 days ago

The original versions were a way to make fun even a boring event such as a 404. If the page stops conveying the type of error to the user then it's just bad UX but also vomiting all the internal jargon to a non-tech user is bad UX.

So, I don't see an error code + something fun to be that bad.

People love dreaming of the 90s wild web and hate the clean cut soulless corp web of today, so I don't see how having fun error pages to be such an issue?

7 comments

xandrius

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Hizonner  3 days ago

This assumes it's fun.

Usually when I hit an error page, and especially if I hit repeated errors, I'm not in the mood for fun, and I'm definitely not in the mood for "fun" provided by the people who probably screwed up to begin with. It comes off as "oops, we can't do anything useful, but maybe if we try to act cute you'll forget that".

Also, it was more fun the first time or two. There's a not a lot of orginal fun on the error pages you get nowadays.

> People love dreaming of the 90s wild web and hate the clean cut soulless corp web of today

It's been a while, but I don't remember much gratuitous cutesiness on the 90s Web. Not unless you were actively looking for it.

  • doublerabbit  3 days ago

    > This assumes it's fun.

    Not to those who don't exist in such cultures. It's creepy, childish, strange to them. It's not something they see in everyday life, nor would I really want to. There is a reason why cartoons are aimed for younger audiences.

    Besides if your webserver is throwing errors, you've configured it incorrectly. Those pages should be branded as the site design with a neat and polite description to what the error is.

doublerabbit  3 days ago

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