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Firefox Mozilla The Internet

Firefox Will Try To Show You Saved Archive Of a Page Instead Of 404 Error (ndtv.com) 119

Posted by msmash from the less-annoying-web dept.
Firefox has announced a new add-on dubbed No More 404s in its Test Pilot platform which aims to change the way we see 404 links on the web. The add-on, Firefox says, replaces the Error 404 from missing webpages, and replaces them with saved archives from the Wayback Machine. From a report on Gadgets 360: Normally, when presented with a missing link, the browser shows the 404 error. However, Mozilla's No More 404s add-on will give Firefox users the choice to see old Internet snapshots saved in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. This is especially handy for users trying to do research or just digging up some old graves out of curiosity. For now, this add-on is only available in Firefox's experimental Test Pilot platform, with no details on availability for regular Firefox users. Interested users can install the test version here. Apart from this, the Test Pilot platform also introduced improved search results through the Awesome Bar, redesigned the Tabs bar to the side, and even tweaked the history feed.
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Firefox Will Try To Show You Saved Archive Of a Page Instead Of 404 Error More

Firefox Will Try To Show You Saved Archive Of a Page Instead Of 404 Error

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  • Addons don't exist I guess. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xession ( 4241115 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:51AM (#52650787)
    This has already been a fixed issue for probably over a decade with addons for Firefox. The addons are why Firefox became so popular in the first place. While its great that they want to include this functionality in the browser, why not just have a list of suggested addons when you install or update? Waste of time on their part...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It sounds kinda neat, if they'd keep it as an addon.

      They could have an entire list of mozilla-developed-and-supported addons! They could get the spotlight/be highlighted/get preference when searching for new addons. They could even be default-installed if they really wanted to.

      But no. They'll end up adding it as an integral part, because they want to feel like their hard work is being used. It would crush their sould if they made an addon and it's only installed by 3 people.

    • Re:Addons don't exist I guess. (Score:5, Informative)

      by LichtSpektren ( 4201985 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @10:59AM (#52651229)
      TFA in fact says it is an add-on.
      • Doesn't really matter much how they implement it if its included already with the browser. Its just like throwing sand in the face of FF addon devs, when they've already had a beach worth thrown in their faces. My point was, why not better support the community that already exists by including or suggesting addon installs when you install or update FF instead of taking it upon themselves to do it themselves. There are so many bigger issues with FF that should be addressed, especially when numerous other add
        • Who says it'll be included with the browser by default? Mozilla has made a bunch of extensions [mozilla.org] that aren't pre-packaged.
        • let me be the first to throw sand in the face of the FF devs who spend their time making fucking crap useless addons instead of fixing their code base, or you know, implementing any for of modern browser security. And this doesn't even touch on the fact that FF is the slowest browser on the face of the earth. 37 seconds to start streaming netflix? Are you fucking with me? 15 seconds to open, another 5 seconds before it's usable. And no, this isn't on some sinky dink POS. FF is dead, let it die, it sto
          • So what features of "modern browser security" does Firefox lack? It can't be anything that the Tor Project or Bruce Schneier considers to be a non-starter.

            I fail to see how a browser with hundreds of millions of users could not be relevant, but ok.

            • Sandboxing.

              Firefox doesn't support sandboxing yet, therefore sandboxing is the security feature that every browser needs to have (for anybody who wants to complain about Firefox).

    • This has already been a fixed issue for probably over a decade with addons for Firefox.

      Fixed issue? What issue? If a page isn't there, it isn't there.

      There's no issue. If a page can't be found, the browser should tell the user. If the user wants to install an add-on to avoid this for some reason, that's their choice, but it shouldn't be default behaviour.

      • Depends on your use of the internet. If you are doing research, it actually can be a pretty major issue and time sink to continually go between the broken links and Wayback. I'll give you that it shouldn't be default behavior though. That's why I was suggesting promoting addons at install or during updates if they want to include features like this more universally.

      • Fixed issue? What issue? If a page isn't there, it isn't there.

        There's no issue. If a page can't be found, the browser should tell the user. If the user wants to install an add-on to avoid this for some reason, that's their choice, but it shouldn't be default behaviour.

        Except sometimes, a page isn't there, but it is, because someone has made a copy of the page while it was still available. Having one-click access to this backup copy can be very handy. In case you didn't RTFA, Mozilla's No More 404s add-on will give Firefox users the choice to see old Internet snapshots saved in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. No, just showing an old copy of a page instead of the current one is not a good idea. Giving the user a choice of pulling up an archived copy instead of

    • Been using Resurrect Pages add-on for years (Score:5, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @11:34AM (#52651477)
      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/ [mozilla.org]

      Not sure why it's never been very popular. It's one of the most useful add-ons I have. Unlike the proposed add-on in TFA which only uses the Wayback Machine, Resurrect Pages lets you pick from four possible sources (Google cache in full and text-only mode for those annoying pages which won't show the text until all the nonexistent pics finish loading first, Wayback Machine, WebCite, archive.is) for a cached version of the page. There used to be more, but I guess some of those archiving projects died.

  • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's really bad. Just imagine you check the conditions of a bank or some prices of a store and it turns out that the information was obsolete.

      • That's really bad. Just imagine you check the conditions of a bank or some prices of a store and it turns out that the information was obsolete.

        If you make financial decisions based on old copies of a page, knowing that the current page is unavailable, you deserve whatever you get.

  • Wayback machine's banner (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is the one time - exception to the rule - where I would like a banner to be obnoxious.

    I see myself being blurry eyed and getting an archived page with outdated information and thinking it's up to date - and being fatigued enough where I just ignore the Wayback Machine's banner as just another advertisement. Actually, even when I'm alert, I ignore all banners as just being some dipshit advertisement - even with adblock on, some make it through.

  • Include google cache as well (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:54AM (#52650811)

    If you use the search box it's quite easy to get a cached page view via Google. cache: + url in the search box will redirect you to the cached version of the url, if it exists.

    Example:
    cache:https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/08/05/1439229/firefox-will-try-to-show-you-saved-archive-of-a-page-instead-of-404-error

  • Horrible Idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:55AM (#52650823)

    I think this is a horrible idea from the website perspective. What if we had to remove several pages/images from the website due to copyright issues? Or maybe the company is listing clients it doesn't represent anymore? Or other information that is no longer valid? They are assuming is a 404 is a mistake but what if it is intentional.

    • If that's the case, then you should be using something like a 301/302 to redirect to / or another sub folder. If you 404 pages, some searching and indexers will down rate you because a 404 is usually a dead end path. If you 301/302 it, then you're handling the issue and sending the client to something that's actually valid instead.

      • Re:Horrible Idea (Score:4, Informative)

        by mrbester ( 200927 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @10:26AM (#52650991) Homepage

        If it has truly been deleted then a 410 Gone should be issued. However, that means you have to have a record of what was deleted that is checked to issue that instead of a 404 Not Found. That's more effort with no real gain.

        Users should only get 301 Permanent Redirect or 302 Found if the resource exists elsewhere. If it doesn't then redirectng them to something other than what they were expecting, *especially* the index page of the site, is incorrect.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Except the content has not been moved, it's been removed. There's nothing to redirect to.

        404s are frequently very intentional.

        • There's absolutely something you can redirect to. You intercept the request pattern for whatever was there and rewrite it to / or /something/ or /index.whatever.

          and you do this on purpose because of other places that have kept old links or were statically linked to your content and you're not able to get them to change or remove the links (even if it's a search crawler) so this way it will snag the http://www.blahblah.com/someth... [blahblah.com] that's being called and you back it up a level and drop it to that folder's

    • Because of the nature of 404, the only thing that can be inferred from it is that the file is no longer there - which 99% of the time is a result of reorganization rather than deliberate removal. 410 (Gone) is the right code for a deliberate removal. You can throw a 410 via your webserver config (ie, via .htaccess or equivalent mechanisms). This response also serves as a signal to other services such as Google that they should remove access to cached versions.

      Internet Archive has procedures in place for r

    • If you don't want services automatically crawling your pages, configure your robots.txt appropriately. http://archive.org/about/faqs.php#2 [archive.org], http://lmgtfy.com/?q=prevent%20google%20from%20caching%20my%20site [lmgtfy.com], etc. This feature (which has been around in the form of the Resurrect Pages addon for at least 10 years [mozilla.org]) simply gives users an easy way to access a backup copy of a page when it isn't found live.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:57AM (#52650837) Journal

    In other news, archive.org becomes inaccessible due to excessive load.

    Seriously, it's slow already. Adding millions of hits on the site isn't going to help.

    • Seriously, it's slow already. Adding millions of hits on the site isn't going to help.

      Millions of hits? More like dozens - we're talking about the remaining Firefox users.

      • Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @10:18AM (#52650957)

        Firefox is number 2 on the desktop. http://gs.statcounter.com/ [statcounter.com]

        It never really was in a minority there, but its almost nonexistent in the mobile world, so its combined stats has gotten much lower due to the rise of the mobile platform.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by trawg ( 308495 )

          Wikipedia stats are probably more representative: https://analytics.wikimedia.or... [wikimedia.org]

          Firefox is a bit further down and, looking at the graphs, still decreasing. It's not as dire as GP indicates but it looks a little grim.

          • That site doesn't remove the mobile stats. If you calculate them out you get roughly the same value, and iexplore being more is probably a statistical effect. Probably it can't be said whether firefox is third or second, but it is under the top three on the desktop.

      • Firefox has about 10% market share (several studies collected here [wikipedia.org]), which is hundreds of millions of people.

  • and not a core feature of the browser...

    This does not sound like something I would want. Browsers do too much caching already, imo. It makes it hard to troubleshoot issues as it is.

    I am having trouble coming up with a scenario where I would want to see an old version of a page rather than the current page.

  • For several reasons:

    a) Any attempt to access a non-existing page that results in showing a page anyway, is basically fooling the user. Some (ehm.. read: many) users may even think that page still exists even though the original is gone. From a UI perspective that's just wrong even if convenient in many cases.

    b) Access to old / archived versions of pages often comes in handy. And that is what the Internet Archive is for. But sometimes pages (or sites) are pulled for a reason. Sometimes good reason(s). N

  • As long as it's optional, not in the way, and impossible to activate by accident I don't have a particular problem with it.

    Personally I think it's a terrible idea. What's shown when I enter an URL should be between whoever designed the website and me. If a site is down, or a page is missing, I want to know about it.

    The last thing I need is a bunch of programmers dreaming up ways to divert me from the real website to whatever is their idea of what I should be seeing. A typical example of a group of coder

  • What happens when I use a 404 status in a web service to signal that the requested resource couldn't be found - the front end handles 404 gracefully and informs the user, updates the UI, etc. Will it still return a 404 status, but inject a whole load of unexpected content?

    • What happens when I use a 404 status in a web service to signal that the requested resource couldn't be found - the front end handles 404 gracefully and informs the user, updates the UI, etc. Will it still return a 404 status, but inject a whole load of unexpected content?

      If I understand the article correctly, web services will be unaffected because this will be baked into Firefox itself.

      So, unless you're running your web service through an instance of Firefox, this won't make any difference.

      • Ah, that's not what I meant. Our web services are used as a back end for our website (as well as through mobile apps & windows clients). That way the majority of the website is static (and cached) and just the dynamic data is fetched (through the abomination that is javascript!). It also means that bugs (or at least some of them) can be fixed quickly with no need to update clients.

        • Ah, that's not what I meant. Our web services are used as a back end for our website (as well as through mobile apps & windows clients). That way the majority of the website is static (and cached) and just the dynamic data is fetched (through the abomination that is javascript!). It also means that bugs (or at least some of them) can be fixed quickly with no need to update clients.

          If people access your web services through Firefox and there is a 404 error, then I would think that your service will probably appear broken or will malfunction for that user. You may be able to intercept the error (catch the 404 return code) and direct the user to another page.

          Firefox should disable this 'feature' by default, but of course they won't.

  • That's a BAD idea for several reasons: 1 - too much load on archive.org 2 - loss of privacy 3 - most users may want to know if an URL/page does not exist anymore
    • Somebody mod parent up, just a little. This will effectively DDOS archive.org, which is already in a pretty feeble condition. That said, it will be obvious to a reader if the page comes from the WABAC.

  • Firefox: Stop breaking things ! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If a page doesn't exist I *WANT* a 404 error. Not some redirected crap. If I want to find a cached version of the page I'll do so myself. Google search results offer a cached version or there's always the wayback machine.

    I wish all these idiots would stop their inane "helping". All their ideas are just "Clippified" crap.

  • is there anyone out there who thinks this is a BAD idea? I mean, an error is an error, hiding it usually causes more harm than good.

  • UGH (Score:2)

    by Holi ( 250190 )
    I hate when my ISP's DNS redirects 404's, I certainly don't want my browser doing it.

  • Maybe it's because I am a SW developer, but I want to see errors, when they occur. Otherwise, how can anybody hope to correct them?

  • I can see it now (Score:3)

    by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @10:37AM (#52651093)
    .... but I checked the Travel advice for Turkey and it said that it was fine!
  • It would be more transparent, and send less load to archive.org for Firefox to give the 404 error but then also include a link to the archived version, clearly marked. There is no good reason to hide the fact that the page is not available.

  • Either/Or? (Score:3)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @10:45AM (#52651143) Journal

    Typically one would want to know they are looking at a stale copy. I'd suggest a prompt such as:

    Error 404: Page Not Found

    Suggestions:

    - View archives of the page at Wayback Machine [link]
    - Tips for verifying your URL [link]
    - Find similar sites using your search engine [link]
    - Try the page again [link]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's what MSIE did. Replaced the web site's 404s with its own 'friendly error pages'. The webmasters hated it, and for good reason.

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by deadwill69 ( 1683700 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @10:48AM (#52651163)
    How about just no. Some things are broken for a reason. Let's leave it that way. Just because you can doesn't always mean you should.
  • How is this NOT going to cause massive amounts of confusion.

    I pity the first person who buys a piece of property that had a popular establishment that's long gone except for it's archived page... who gets subjected to an endless barrage of:

    Person: "Where's wacky world?
    Owner: "Wacky world burned to the ground with no survivors in 2011... Sorry man"
    Person: "But I was just on their website!"
    Owner: "Yeah, your browser just skull fucked you."

  • The first rule of Usenet applies to the Wayback machine in spades.

    More attention on it especially something like this doing the lookups automatically that make it seem part of browser the more site owners feel compelled to exclude their content from the machine as a matter of course or worse lawyers for sites and third parties third parties try their hand at nonsensical legal theories.

    http://www.netdisaster.com/des... [netdisaster.com]

  • TFA says it's an add-on. There is no indication that it will even ship with Firefox by default (Mozilla has made other extensions that aren't pre-packaged into Firefox).

    Now, it's totally fine to complain when bloatware is added directly to the browser like Hello and Pocket (I would defend Reader though). But TFA does not indicate in any way that this will be the case.

  • cached pages? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rob MacDonald ( 3394145 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @11:47AM (#52651589)
    Isn't this the same as google offering to show you a previously cached page, but using the way back archive and offloading the storage and traffic costs on them while providing no revenue or benefit? Yes, that's exactly what this is. Lets let the wayback machine pony up the storage and traffic costs, as well as IO and Compute. That is what some people would call, a dick move. No different than linking images from article A into your article so site A has to pay the hosting and traffic costs, cracked did a funny article on this very subject.

  • So once you hit the archived site does the add-on change the links so that you don't stay on the archived site?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • "Hey I've got a great idea! If we do this little thing our product will be even better!"
    They do some little thing no one asked for, to half a billion installed browsers.
    That thing in no way affects their bottom line.
    But somewhere else, the bottom drops out of something else and something precious is broken.
    Please don't do this.

    So Wayback is going to be the error page for every damned malformed or mis-typed link? That is abuse and attack.

    I can see Wayback hit like a gigaton of bricks as people who have no d

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