Well, I'm not sure where to put this, but I figured people using ajax are more likely to run into these issues.
I have been building my own webserver (don't ask, just trust me when I say I have to) from scratch.
I have been using the RFCs to correctly generate response headers, particularly the status line:
"HTTP/1.0 200 Ok "+crlf
"HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found"+crlf
Now when I use the XMLHttpRequest, it sees my "404" status code and "Not Found" line correctly.
However, both firefox and IE don't believe the 404 and just make a blank page.
I was under the assumption that the browsers would auto-generate a default error message page when it sees the 404 error. I am perfectly capable of creating a custom one to return, but I would prefer to save the overhead of sending more data if I could.
I thought I should be able to send a fully qualified set of headers with the 404 status code and not have the browser just sit there blankly.
Anyone have any ideas on this? Or should I just start making my own 404 page now?