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I’ve recently been reading ‘Defensive Design for the Web‘ from 37Signals. The book primarily discusses how to improve the user experience in the case something goes wrong or there is a malfunction. That is why I put together a nice error handling page for simplifive.

Here’s a good example of defensive design in the real world from my water heater:

Error handling on a website is essential to the user experience. For example, a simple 404 page can do wonders: 1) save a user from leaving your site 2) help you in reporting the problem 3) redirect users to ’sticky’ sections of your site. You may think you don’t need a 404 handler because your such a great web developer. Well, get off your horse and check your log files. Then you will come to realize that you may as well.

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