[Zope] [ANSWER] 500 error with IE on login

[Quentin Smith]

Hi-

On Wednesday, May 8, 2002, at 08:51  AM, Gregory Dudek wrote:

>
> Re. returning a 500 status on an authentication error, which makes
> the login screen invisible to MSIE users on windows:
>
>> On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 12:41:56PM -0400, SOMEBODY wrote:
>>> I strongly oppose modifying a properly functionng, RFC-conforming
>>> product to coddle a non-informative and non-RFC-conforming product.
>>> Fix the broken product, not the working one.
>
> (Please note that the quote above was a followup to my message and
> it was not what I said! )
>  If I was making a tool/product only for myself, my team or something 
> like
> that I would fully concur. This is not the case for most zope users.
>
>  a) If zope is used to support a publically-acessible site it absolutely
> must work in a manner that makes it convenient and acceptable
> for MSIE/Windows users: I take it that's not debatable.
>     Since I never user MSIE/Win myself I had a hell of a time figuring 
> out
> the 500-error bug (blaming it on networking issues and such).  This is 
> not
> a good state of affairs.
>     While i don't like it, MSIE/Win is a de facto standard.  (I know 
> this
> is flame bait... you know what I mean, I feel sick for saying it, so 
> please
> let's not get into it.)
>     The hard-nosed "don't fix a conforming product line" if taken too 
> strongly
> it the kind of attitude that could really be bad for zope acceptance.
>

I should have jumped in earlier, but anyway, there's a simple solution 
to this. IE looks at the size of the html page, and if it is below a 
certain size, it will show its "helpful" page. So, we could just add an 
html comment or something like this:
<!-- This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This is 
stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to 
make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. 
I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate 
Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This 
is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff 
to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE 
happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate 
Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This 
is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff 
to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE 
happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate 
Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This 
is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff 
to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE 
happy. I hate Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate 
Microsoft. This is stupid stuff to make IE happy. I hate Microsoft. -->
I think that the page has to be at least 5K, but don't quote me on that.

>  b) It seems that semantically a "server error" (500)
> code isn't even the right code for this particular problem, so the fix
> is fine there (although I have not checked the RFC).

I have no idea, although neither 500 nor 200 sounds quite right.

>
>  c) The worse issue is what to do with the other unexpected cases where
> zope might generate a 500 error as it's a default exception code.  On my
> zope, I want the user to see the message page, if any.
> Inserting code to detected the
> browser/system and only change a 500 to a 200 code for MSIE/Win users
> alone seems fine but I'm not gonna bother doing this myself right now,
> in particular 'cause I don't know how robust it would be.

See above.

>
>  d) As an aside, does any other browser ever really care about these 
> codes?

YES. iCab on MacOS, most Gecko derivatives (but not Mozilla), and just 
about every webcrawler.

--Quentin

>
>
> Greg Dudek
> http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~dudek
>