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by blowski 4147 days ago
I totally agree. Why shouldn't they be allowed to have any personality? At least they explicitly show "This is an error page".
1 comments

Criticisms you could make include:

* Frivolous about an error that's probably annoying to the audience. Not a major issue imo.

* Website Feedback link is relatively difficult to spot (but there, grey and in footer).

* Search option is relatively difficult to spot (but there, black and top right).

* Heavy (2.7MB) for a page which needs to load quickly. Not an issue for Bloomberg with their slick CDN but bad practice for most. The bulk of that is the .gif (http://cdn.gotraffic.net/business/public/images/bbiz404.3020..., c.1.6MB)

Criticisms I would actually make include:

* uh. I feel stupid for laughing so hard at it? I mean, really, it's pretty silly.

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.
Exactly, it looks pretty authentic, so much different than the politically correct fabricated PR/Marketing/Geekiness that's everywhere now.
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.
I'd add a concern that the animation can probably also induce motion sickness in some people.