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Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

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Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#191

Post by starttoaster »

ryandrake wrote: post #133
troupo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, now I have to do this every time for shitty dumbed down apps. Prime example: Twitter always responds "oops, something went wrong" even if the backend returns `{ error: "Video aspect ration is not allowed. Try 16:9" }`

Those "oopsie-doopsie, website made a poopsie" infantilizing error messages are just awful. Tell the user 1. specifically what went wrong, 2. what, if anything, they can do to correct, and 3. a token (like an error message) that could be useful for tech support or reporting a bug. People's heads aren't going to explode if you treat them like functioning adults.

You’ve just vastly overestimated the technical capabilities of most Twitter users.

Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#192

Post by isodnhionio »

mrpippy wrote: post #175
isodnhionio wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Users have no business seeing error codes. Those are for devs. Hiding them away in devtools is a very good thing. I can't say I agree. That would be a good idea in a world where users never encountered errors in normal circumstances, but in fact computers don't work very well and users encounter errors on a regular basis. Using computers is a skill. It takes study. You can either pretend that it doesn't, giving user…

> Somehow the people at Apple thought an error code and a brief description would be scary, so they opted for this absolutely terrifying icon instead That error is the boot firmware telling you it can’t find a bootable OS. It doesn’t know what language you speak, and would an error code really be helpful? If you’re knowledgeable enough to know what the error codes mean, you would know that cmd-V gives you verbose log…

>If you’re knowledgeable enough to know what the error codes mean, you would know that cmd-V gives you verbose logging.

This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. You assume that anyone who doesn't know every hidden Macintosh hotkey is so ignorant of computers they won't even know how to look up an error code. If there are magic hotkeys that modify the boot sequence, that might be some information I would like to know when trying to boot my computer! Why not display those hotkeys during the boot sequence like a normal OS?

Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#193

Post by dredmorbius »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #140
dredmorbius wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Web is an error condition": http://deirdre.net/programming-sucks-why-i-quit/ > See also Richard I. Cook's "How Complex Systems Fail": https://how.complexsystems.fail/ > (Latter is an HN perennial, with 55 sumbissions presently: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=how%20complex%20systems%20fail >. Most recent 10 months ago, so not quite ready for a re-up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32895812 >.)

The first one is a 404. I love the irony of there being an error condition in this case of a missing redirect. https://deirdre.net/2014/programming-sucks-why-i-quit/

I was being lazy and had copied the URL from an earlier comment of mine mentioning it.

The Internet Archive has a copy as well: https://web.archive.org/web/20200922230737/https://deirdre.n...>

Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#194

Post by mike503 »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #60
troupo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power users haven't become lazy. The middle ground for power users has disappeared. Now it's a split between "everything is so dumbed down and hidden behind fifteen layers of clicks" and "setting up and caring for your system is a second job in addition to your regular job".

Dev tools in every browser is a 1 level menu in the main hamburger menu deep or available via 2 possible KB shortcuts (at least in Windows).

That assumes you're in a browser context.

I think overall the complaint is every type of experience. Including native apps. You can't simply dev tools inside of a native app. Even with Charles proxy or something you'd be grasping at straws trying to figure out what may be the actual issue (and at that point you probably can't work around it anyway)

Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#195

Post by mike503 »

recursive wrote: post #146
notRobot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone interested, here's a bookmarklet to view the current page's HTTP status code (makes a new request): javascript:(function()%7Bjavascript%3A(function()%20%7B%0A%20%20var%20xhr%20%3D%20new%20XMLHttpRequest()%3B%0A%20%20xhr.onreadystatechange%20%3D%20function()%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20if%20(xhr.readyState%20%3D%3D%3D%204)%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20alert('HTTP%20Status%20Code%3A%20'%20%2B%20xhr.status)%3B%0A%20%20%…

This assumes a GET.

Also firing a second request would break restful behavior and could wind up really messing stuff up worse. Maybe it places an order twice? Who knows. Not a good idea.

Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#196

Post by Guvante »

pomstazlesa wrote: post #181
kube-system wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably not the result of internationally dumbing down the message, but lazy error handling.

It's probably both. Since you want to obscure it from the end user, you can also afford to be lazy and have sloppy implementation.

That isn't true, laziness will punch straight through a tight definition of error code handling.

After all if you have three API layers realizing in this situation the second layer isn't forwarding that error code because it erroneously thought it was one you hide behind a generic one is pretty common.

Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#197

Post by nottorp »

funcDropShadow wrote: post #45
onion2k wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did we stop building software for the "Power User" persona? I think the change was very simple - we stopped bothering with middleground. "Power Users" were treated like "users, but a bit more", so we had 'users', 'power users', and 'developers'. All that happened is that we just accepted that power user can have the same access to tools as developers. We didn't stop giving power users extra power. We gave power…

> We didn't stop giving power users extra power. We gave power users more power. No, most software today is designed for the use case that you have never seen the software before. That is implicitly enforced by the way most companies do A/B testing. The experiments show a new part of the UI to an unsuspecting user without any upfront knowledge that they are part of an experiment. Therefore the variant that has the lo…

> No, most software today is designed for the use case that you have never seen the software before.

Yep, it's fun when you go to a site where you have a log in but it expired and have to search for the tiny 'sign in' button that's mostly covered by the sign up form.

Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#198

Post by BrandoElFollito »

falcor84 wrote: post #19
onion2k wrote: post #14

(I'm not sure there's any way to find the HTTP status code in a modern Firefox environment short of using web developer tools. It's not in places like 'Page Info' as far as I can see.) I'm old enough to remember times before browsers showed 'friendly' error messages, and a 500 response from a server would display a '500 Server Error' message to the user. Users hated it. They'd panic and think they'd broken the websit…

When did we stop building software for the "Power User" persona? I don't disagree that there are some (many?) people who start screaming and running in circles when they see an error code, but not every user is like that. You don't have to be a dev to care any the distinction between a system doing its job and silently failing. Why not have some indication that there's smoke coming out from the engine?

Probably because power users are en insignificant fraction of users for a general public application.

I drive a car and only care about the speed, how far I can drive and to be warned that I have to stop if something is wrong.

I do not care about the temperature of the oil or water, about the tension on the thffr which powers the louhguh or why zgfnkvgv failed.

I know that if something goes wrong I will call the road assistance number.

If someone wants to learn more there is the hidden bus they can plug into, aka Dev Tools For Cars

Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#199

Post by BrandoElFollito »

brabel wrote: post #57
Sebb767 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this is related to an error code. Most of the time, if you get a non-200, the website is broken in some way and it's not your problem to fix. If it is (because you develop an extension, for example), it's easy enough to open dev tools. But for the most part, status codes aren't relevant even for power users, as you have no idea whether the page handles the error or is silently failing.

> Most of the time, if you get a non-200, the website is broken in some way That's completely wrong. 1xx codes are all INFORMATIONAL (usually used for switching protocols). 2xx codes are all SUCCESS. 3xx codes are all REDIRECTs. 4xx codes are all CLIENT ERROR. Only 5xx codes are SERVER ERROR. See https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7231#section-6

And?

1xx you do not care

2xx you are fine and do not care

3xx you are redirected and do not care

4xx crap, the client is wrong, you cannot do anything because the app is wrong

5xx crap, the server is wrong and you cannot do anything either.

"You hit a problem, it was reported to the devs, sorry. Try later" is the only reasonable message for normal users

Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with

#200

Post by zlg_codes »

bombcar wrote: post #187
zlg_codes wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. I might have to look into this when I get a newer car. Still 'rocking' a 00s Honda at the moment.

Everything post ‘97 should have an OBD or OBD2 port which should connect to the default laptop adapters/software.

Thanks for the tip, I had no clue. Will look into it!
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