Re: WAI Checkpoint 7.5: Re-directs

> Some reason the server cannot return a page with page not found information?

It should always do so, but as the payload of the 403 or 404.  The
HTTP standards say that there should be a fall back document associated
with all rejection status reports.

Most web servers should be able to do this if the fancy error page is
referenced by a local URL, although I find it not uncommon for 
even such local URLs to be broken and produce a double fault.  When
things really break is when an absolute URL is used; in that case,
the client has to mediate, and sees a redirect for the original URL,
not an error, issues the redireted URL, which comes back as a success,
so it looks like the original URL was a valid redirection, rather than
a broken link.

Cheap web hosters are likely to redirect to their branded error page,
and therefore require an absolute URL, breaking the semantics.

Received on Saturday, 31 January 2004 11:06:43 UTC