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The Microsoft DirectX® Web site has evolved into something new—and, we hope, much improved. Our goals were to provide you with a better Web experience and make it easier for you to find the content you need. Even the URL is new—the old www.microsoft.com/directx has become www.microsoft.com/windows/directx.

New Look
The first thing you may notice is that the color scheme has changed from a mix of purple and green to blue, the color used to designate all the Windows product and technology sites. Make sure to look for the new navigational components in the upper right corner of some pages. For example, the On This Page box that appears on this particular page helps you find specific information within this article. Other components help you get downloads, read documents, or find related information elsewhere on the site or farther afield.

New Navigation
To help you find what you are looking for, we've incorporated a new navigational menu on the left side of the screen. When you point to an item with a right-pointing arrow, a "fly-out" menu appears—a feature used on other Microsoft sites that helps you more easily get to important content deeper on the site.

News source: Microsoft Direct X Home

Geek Chic, 404 Divas

Part computer science and part geek chic for hip Webmasters, 404 pages are becoming the Internet equivalent of TV bloopers. For spectators, the hunt for 404 error messages is a pastime. Some sites, like 404 Research Lab tag and bag dead pages that are amusing, odd, and sometimes disturbing. Site owner Jenni Ripley says she gets referrals of about 50 links to noteworthy 404 messages each week.

Given that the Web is teeming with millions of dead Web pages, finding bad ones is easy. Hunting funny ones is harder, Ripley says. As the Web expands, more of us will be stumbling on links to forgotten Web pages that simply don't exist anymore, she says. Ripley considers herself the Web's only 404 aficionado. "Webmasters should take 404 error messages more seriously," she says. "If a dead Web page isn't useful, at least it could be funny." Her favorites include a 404 that lets you play Yahtzee online and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's 404 haiku error message inspired by a William Carlos Williams ode to unguarded plums:

"I ate your Web page. Forgive me, It was juicy And tart on my tongue."

"A good 404 error helps people find what they are looking even though you may have been taken down a blind alley," Ripley says. Proud Webmasters often assume no one will click on a broken link or stumble on a dead page on their sites, so they do not follow 404 etiquette.

Ultimately, a 404 message is merely standard code that a server spits out when Web pages are removed or do not exist. Return codes in the 400-499 ranges are referred to as "client errors," in effect faulting us for a missing Web page or mistyped URL.

Return codes in the 500-599 ranges are referred to as "server errors." These errors indicate an internal server error or a configuration problem that prevents a server from properly answering a request. The most common code, which most surfers never see, is 200. It indicates that a page was successfully retrieved

Getting It Wrong and Right

Most Web sites are not 404-friendly, anyone who's used a search engine that doesn't weed out dead links from results already knows. But helpful 404 messages are evolving. Humor aside, any site worth its salt redirects flummoxed surfers to a navigation page to help get them back on track, Ripley says. For example if you get lost on the Lycos Network, all dead links serve up the Lycos navigational topics tree.

In contrast, dead links at EBay.com, Barnes and Noble, or even tech-savvy IBM deliver the equivalent of a blank stare. They neither offer advice to help you find what you seek nor try to point the way. Shame on them, Ripley says. Such practices prove that the Web is still deficient when it comes to usability.

Interestingly, Microsoft Internet Explorer users sometimes don't even get the chance to see a site's 404 error message. That's because Microsoft serves up its own rather dry and useless "page cannot be found" error message instead. In IE versions 5 and above, Microsoft identifies a Web page 404 error message before displaying it. If the byte size value of the 404 page is small (around 512 bytes) Microsoft displays its own message instead.

You can do little to avoid 404 messages. But if your page was abducted by a space alien, here's how to find out what you're missing. Copy the Web address and paste it into Google's search engine query field. If you're lucky, Google will find a cached version of the page in its index.

Remember, to err is human, and sometimes 404 messages can be divine. Don't let a 404 upset you too much. Apparently even some Web sites get pretty depressed about not being able to help you find what you're looking for.