Yeah, if Jakob Nielsen reviewed it, he would damn it to hell. But I'm happy that even on some big corporate sites, there's a glimmer of the wackiness of the early internet shining through instead of the pseudo-wackiness that seems to be the current trend.
A 1.6MB simple .gif animation is a bit unexpected - I was thinking there would be some new HTML5 tech involved (WebGL?) But as bloated as it is, it was probably the best way to make something that works on just about any browser.
As a vehicle for getting word of their site redesign out its clearly been pretty effective. I mean I literally learned Bloomberg redesigned their website from an art blog of all places, and this is the second time its been on the HN front page now. This is a 'how', not a 'how not'.
WTF...! It's Awesome! WTF happens to the avatar though? It looks like it's going to jump but then falls to pieces. I wouldn't say this is the best way to display a 404 page, however I agree it's nice to see a big corporation making light of an error.
OP here
Didn't know they had a panache for awesomely creepy Error pages. Seems to fit in with their personality, in which case, the title of the post is my bad.
Anyways, I came across this while trying to resolve their archive page links, which seems to be broken, possibly after they changed everything to businessweek.com
Although a small tweak to the url can get you to the article, a better tweak takes you to this gem of a 404! :)
Their 500 pages are just as wacky:
http://www.bloomberg.com/500 http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/500