Imagine you are cruising along on the Internet going from site to site clicking away humming

Men Without Hat's  - Safety Dance song

when all of a sudden out of nowhere you click on a link that stops you dead in your tracks.. BAM!! "404 ERROR". You ask yourself, wait was it something I did? Did I loose my connection? You glance at your lower right hand corner of your screen to see if your Internet connection is on, relieved you see the blinking lights and know you are still go for launch. Yet you  feel lost, confused, kind of betrayed... why the error? Why the ugly browser warning when we live in a time when server side scripting can take me to a page on the site that may help me find my way?

I recently had a discussion regarding the 404 ERROR Page that really made me open my eyes to the differences of opinions in regards to how to handle this situation. I'm going to assume for the sake of publishing that you know what the 404 Error is but just in case you would like to read more about it, click here. With the ability to control were the user goes when this happens many web developers have become creative in some cases down right funny when the end user gets a 404 error. I personally lean towards this trend as I feel the end user should not be made to feel as if what they did was wrong, and if I can get a quick laugh out of them then I think they would be more inclined to forgive the error and stay on the site. My colleague on the other hand thinks that when dealing with business related sites all pages should remain professional and a simple let me get you back on track style of error should be created.

I definately see the validity in both arguments but I can't help and enjoy some of the creative ways different web developers handle this error. Here is a list of my Top Ten website's 404 pages not including our own here at E.S. Technical Solutions.

E.S. Technical Solutions 404 Page

http:://www.estechnicalsolutions/404

Top Ten 404 Pages:

1. Slonky

2. Jackfig

3. Devlounge

4. Acro Media

5. Technorati

6. Kottke

7. Expansion Broadcast

8. CSS Leak

9. Craigslist

10. GeekSquad

I would like to know, how do you handle your 404 Page?

Feel free to comment and post links of your pages or other creative 404 error pages and maybe together we can convince my colleague that there are more people that just myself who think that having a friendly 404 page is okay!