At long last, document the MSIE "friendly error message" issue.

I was very diplomatic here.  I was tempted to use the apache bully-pulpit to
berate MS over this arrogant mis-feature, but I restrained myself.

git-svn-id: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/trunk@95558 13f79535-47bb-0310-9956-ffa450edef68

diff --git a/docs/manual/mod/core.html.en b/docs/manual/mod/core.html.en
index 482a376e01e546b919dda0ef7a82d8e5a054fd6b..f76cfdd7163abafac0da1118782f088f0586c3cd 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/manual/mod/core.html.en
+++ b/docs/manual/mod/core.html.en
@@ -447,6 +447,14 @@ in case of an error</td></tr><tr><td nowrap="nowrap"><a href="directive-dict.htm
     "ErrorDocument 401" directive then it must refer to a local
     document.</strong></p>
 
+    <p>Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) will ignore server-generated
+    error messages when they are "too small" and substitute its own
+    "friendly" error messages.  The size threshold varies depending on
+    the type of error, but in general, if you make your error document
+    greater than 512 bytes, then MSIE will show the server-generated
+    error rather than masking it.  More information is available in
+    Microsoft Knowledgebase article <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q294807">Q294807</a>.</p>
+
     <p>Prior to version 2.0, messages were indicated by prefixing
     them with a single unmatched double quote character.</p>
 <p><strong>See also </strong></p><ul><li><a href="../custom-error.html">documentation of

diff --git a/docs/manual/mod/core.xml b/docs/manual/mod/core.xml
index 0b3e31958739750d0748a316352d303c69c4a4ef..2074e16f690dd28b54648ec4bec3678d2e363d2d 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/manual/mod/core.xml
+++ b/docs/manual/mod/core.xml
@@ -650,6 +650,15 @@ in case of an error</description>
     "ErrorDocument 401" directive then it must refer to a local
     document.</strong></p>
 
+    <p>Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) will ignore server-generated
+    error messages when they are "too small" and substitute its own
+    "friendly" error messages.  The size threshold varies depending on
+    the type of error, but in general, if you make your error document
+    greater than 512 bytes, then MSIE will show the server-generated
+    error rather than masking it.  More information is available in
+    Microsoft Knowledgebase article <a
+    href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q294807">Q294807</a>.</p>
+
     <p>Prior to version 2.0, messages were indicated by prefixing
     them with a single unmatched double quote character.</p>
 </usage>