Force Internet Explorer to Display Your Custom 404

As you may know, Internet Explorer versions 5 and greater have their own 'friendly' error messages built in, so that you don't have to look at the ugly standard 404. However, some people who have designed their own custom 404s have found that IE is still ignoring their page and displaying its own message, which is likely not quite as helpful as the custom error. Silly Microsoft, always trying to do our thinking for us. Here's how to get around it - and it's simple!

IE looks at the size of the 404 page to decide whether to display its own error. All you have to do is make sure that the size of your file is greater than 512 bytes. This does not include graphics, so make sure you add enough text to accomplish this. (If you just need filler text, add a bunch of nonsense text in comments in the source code.)

Thanks to Robert H. for the tip!