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

Posted by msmash on 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.

17 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Addons don't exist I guess. by xession · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Addons don't exist I guess. by LichtSpektren · · Score: 4, Informative

      TFA in fact says it is an add-on.

  2. Wayback machine's banner by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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    I see myself being blurry eyed and getting an archived page with outdated information and thinking it's up to date - and being fatigued enough where I just ignore the Wayback Machine's banner as just another advertisement.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.

  3. Include google cache as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  4. Horrible Idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Horrible Idea by mrbester · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
    2. Re:Horrible Idea by caitriona81 · · Score: 2

      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 removing items from their archive as well - they will automatically detect certain robots.txt entries, and they
      will also accept manual removal requests.

      However, think long and hard about whether something should be remove from archives - unless there is a compelling legal reason to do so, it's bad form, and if you are high profile, enough to have things to hide, someone will likely have mirrored your content, and they may respond to you taking down content by distributing it as widely as possible.

  5. In other news... by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    1. Re:In other news... by NotInHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Firefox is number 2 on the desktop. http://gs.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.

    2. Re:In other news... by Nunya666 · · Score: 2

      Comments like this are why people feel slashdot has turned against firefox ..

      No, Mozilla turned against Firefox by turning it into a Chrome-clone.

  6. Re:Melania's website by NotInHere · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes, it'll be a copy of michelle obama's website.

  7. I can see it now by Chrisq · · Score: 2

    .... but I checked the Travel advice for Turkey and it said that it was fine!

  8. Either/Or? by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    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]

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  9. Why? by deadwill69 · · Score: 2

    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.

  10. Re:Time to stop using Firefox? by LichtSpektren · · Score: 2

    There's plenty of extensions in the wild right now that are filled with security and PR problems, why don't those stop you?

  11. Been using Resurrect Pages add-on for years by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/

    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.

  12. cached pages? by phishybongwaters · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.