196227 - If web page not found (404), offer to show archive version (www.archive.org) or search-for-like

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: Navigation, enhancement)

Description

[David A. Wheeler]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:0.9.4.1) Gecko/20020518 Netscape6/6.2.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:0.9.4.1) Gecko/20020518 Netscape6/6.2.3

If a web page is requested and NOT found, the browser should offer to
try to retrieve it via some other manner.  Often, this problem is
because a page moved, or sometimes it's been removed.

At the least, it should offer a hyperlink to
the Internet archive (www.archive.org)'s copies of the requested page.
Internally, the archive address should be configurable, but I doubt that
there needs to be a GUI to configure it.
Also, a list of links scrambling up the directory tree would be nice
(e.g., if http://a.com/b/c.html doesn't work, propose a link to
http://a.com/b).

Bonus points: a link that tries to get the latest copy of the document
(if there is one), then asks a search engine to fine the document
"most like" it.

If "guess again" is implemented (bug 167858), I would expect this to only
be shown after fuzzy search is attempted but fails.

This is vaguely related to fuzzy search (bug 35924),
which is talking about searching and having no search results.




Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Request page that web server isn't serving.



Actual Results:  
Error 404, generally without some help in getting the page
(e.g., old copies or locating its new location).

Expected Results:  
Mozilla should have helped me find the moved page.

Comment 1

[Darin Fisher]

maybe.  often times webservers provide their own informative 404 page.  we
probably don't have enough context to distinguish between informative 404 a bunk
404 pages, but i'll keep this as something to consider.

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

See bug 109574

Comment 3

[David A. Wheeler]

Certainly, some web servers provide useful 404 pages... but there's
no reason it has to be either/or.  Mozilla could use a simple pair of
frames: one frame would contain the web server's 404 message, and the
other frame would display Mozilla alternatives to help the user find
the data.

And bug 109574 is right... another useful alternative is a request
to Google's cache.  Hmm, when you get a 404, you get a nice page letting
you click to the Internet archive, a Google cache, higher
directories, and maybe other options like a search-for-old-content.

It may not be technologically fancy, but I think a lot of
ordinary users would find that to be a very nice touch.
Web pages move all the time (_I_ certainly encounter them often!).
Aunt Tillies and technology journalists notice nice touches like this.

Comment 4

[David A. Wheeler]

There are two extensions related to this - one lets you retrieve from Google,
the other from the Internet archive.  But you'd need to know about and install
the extensions, and then when the query fails, specifically invoke each
extension when you get a 404.  Aunt Tillie won't know to do all that, it's
certainly not discoverable.
Even better would be a way to search for and find the new URL... there may be a
way to get an old copy (say from Google) and then report "documents most similar
to it" (which could find its new location).  THAT is certainly not easily done
straight from the browser.

Comment 5

[Darin Fisher]

-> default owner