Visiting a 404 link strips the header from its features (avatar, search, hamburger, etc)

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Visiting a 404 link on Discourse causes the header to lose its features, including the avatar, search, and hamburger menu. However, this issue does not occur on mobile devices twofoursixeight. Multiple users have reported experiencing this issue jidanni, Canapin.

According to Stephen, this behavior is due to the way Discourse handles 404 errors from bad inbound links, serving a flat page without the app’s features. In contrast, internal navigation to a non-existent page serves a 404 error within the app, retaining the header features.

Jagster suggests that this issue may be due to Discourse being a single-page JavaScript app, which makes it challenging to serve JavaScript-based content with a static HTML 404 error page. Stephen confirms this, explaining that the static 404 page is not part of the app and therefore cannot function like it.

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If we follow a gone link it’s like we’re suddenly not a member anymore:

  • Our cheery icon is gone from the upper right, as are the helpful search and “chat” icons.
  • The friendly three bar menu is gone from the upper left.
  • Sayonara sidebars too.

It’s like some crisis has happened.

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Visiting bad link on mobile: everything is still there

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All I know is

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I experience the same:

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AFAIK this is still the case:

So an error raised by a bad inbound link will serve the flat page, whereas an error from a bad internally navigated link would still contain those elements.

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I see.Hopefully Deleted topics lead to error page will soon not trigger this in the first place.

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Just another reminder: I work mostly with content and human’s way to use content, and I’m a webmaster, sysadmin and admin of everything just because I’m poor and small fish…

But — can the issue here is so simple that because Discourse is kind of a-typical :wink: web-solution it is harder or close to impossible send JS-based content when serving html status error 404 that needs static content in the meaning how a client sees it? I don’t know at all what W3C, RFC etc. says.

No? Not even close?

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I thought web pages could have both script and noscript parts.

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But discourse isn’t web pages, it’s a single page JavaScript app.

If you visit the app via a nonexistent route, such as a broken link, then you are served a static 404 page which is styled to look like the rest of the site. It isn’t part of the app, so can’t function like it.

If you click an internal link (from within the app) to a page which doesn’t exist then it serves you a 404 error within the app itself.

They aren’t the same thing.

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