error-message-examples

2007-08-14T13:30:41Z

Jazz: /* Open Questions */

<h1> Error Message Examples </h1>

== Contributors ==

* [http://evan.prodromou.name/ Evan Prodromou]

== Introduction ==

Examples of error messages published as chunks of readable (X)HTML by Web applications.

== Table of Contents ==

__TOC__

== Examples ==

Note that many of these examples are failed logins; they're just the easiest kind of error to generate.

* [http://www.mediawiki.org/ MediaWiki] failed login

<pre><div class="errorbox">
<h2>Login error:</h2>
Incorrect password or confirmation code entered. Please try again.
</div></pre>

* [http://www.wordpress.com/ WordPress], failed to enter required fields in comment

<pre><p>Error: please fill the required fields (name, email).</p></pre>

* [http://www.paypal.com/ PayPal] , trying to send negative dollars.

<pre><div class="messageBox error">
<p>Some required information is missing or incomplete. Please correct your entries and try again.</p>
<ul><li>Please enter an amount greater than zero.</li></ul>
</div></pre>

* [http://www.google.com/ Google] apps login error

<pre><div class="errormsg" id="errormsg_0_Passwd">
Username and password do not match. (You provided XXXXXXXXXX)
</div></pre>

* [http://www.technorati.com/ Technorati] login error

<pre><p class="error">Sorry, the member name and password
you entered do not match. Please try again.</p></pre>

* [http://www.yahoo.com/ Yahoo] failed login

<pre><div class="yregertxt"><strong>Invalid ID or password.</strong><br> Please try again.</div></pre>

== Open Questions ==
* How is this significantly different than the plethora of HTTP status codes? Most of the examples currently on this page are just failed logins. [[User:DerrickPallas|DerrickPallas]] 09:31, 14 Jul 2007 (PDT)
** [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.4.2 401 Unauthorized]
** [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.4.3 402 Payment Required]
** [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.4.4 403 Forbidden]
** [http://www.bodhost.com/web-hosting/index.php/2007/08/10/http-error-codes/ HTTP Status Code Information]
** ...

I used login errors just because they were easy to generate (see note above). It's actually kind of hard, as a user of these services, to generate a database connection error. Form validation errors are a little easier; I used an example from Paypal. I can go back and try to make some other errors happen, if you like, too.

I think that, first of all, many sites ''don't'' return a 4xx or 5xx error code when something goes wrong; they return 200 with an HTML error message as part of the content (often a very small part of the content, wrapped with the site's "skin" of header, footer, and navigational HTML). I think there's a case to be made that the response for a POSTed form with a mis-formatted phone number in it should have a status code of 400 or 409, but that's simply not how most Web sites work.

I also think that even if some Web site is perfectly RESTful and uses the correct HTTP status messages religiously, there's still some value in a ''specific'' section of the resulting page that defines the actual error. --[[User:Evan|Evan]] 21:28, 17 Jul 2007 (PDT)

== See Also ==

* [[error-message-brainstorming|error message brainstorming]]

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error-message-examples