Examples of professional & useful error pages

Question

What real-life error web pages have you seen that have really impressed you AND would be genuinely useful to all types of users (savvy,novice,laid-back,frustrated,etc). Why were you impressed by the error?

Answer 1

Stackoverflow :) getting an error when using my claimID,...

the good thing I read on the error message/site was that this was NOT my fault, and its due to an internal error (and optional contact was there too)

why I think this is impressing?

there are thousands of sites, where you get an error and it just states "404" or "error, try again" - no word if I may doing something wrong or internal problems or, or...

Answer 2

Not exactly professional, but it gets the point across: http://www.thecenter2000.com/last/

Answer 3

Check out this page and you will know how to create proper 404 pages :)

Answer 4

The Firefox extension "Resurrect Pages". This replaces Firefox's standard error page, which is fairly informative but only marginally useful, with a page that is just as informative but also gives the user some tools to help work around the issue.

http://trac.arantius.com/wiki/Extensions/Resurrect#Screenshots

EDIT: Yes I know it's not a webpage itself, but there's no reason an actual webpage couldn't be at least this nice and helpful.

Answer 5

It's not just web pages, but About Face (Alan Cooper's book) has a good section on error message. Something like:

• What happened. In laymans terms.

• How does this effect the user. Did they lose data? Just an annoyance?

• What they should do now (reboot, try again etc)

And put the techo info in a hidden area (ie, click here to get the propeller head version)

I did this for a project in WinForms and it worked well, tho we didn't get much feedback from the customers (tho they didn't moan either)