Transparent 404 page
To give the feeling of transparent ice or transparent glass to the page, SolidWorks software is used to render the images. The 404 page consists of a ’404 error,’ a matrix just like the blumblum homepage and a message of ‘File Not Found.’

Alphabets made of Glass or Ice
In 3D softwares like 3dsMax, text can be directly entered and rendered using any texture. It is mystery that this option is not available in SolidWorks. So I had to realize the ‘404 error’ text using the ‘curves’ command in SolidWorks. An ‘extrusion’ and ‘fillet’ commands are also used to get the solid feel.

The material for the rendering is selected as ‘Clear Glass.’

The 3D drawing is shown on the left and the corresponding transparent TIFF rendered output is shown on the right. Shadows are disabled to get a ‘suspended’ feeling in infinite space.
The same procedure is repeated to make the transparent matrix.

Integration

The actual checkerboard pattern (3) is superimposed to the TIFF rendered image to give a transparency feeling to the output (4) using Photoshop.
The ‘file not found’ text is placed and a ‘perspective’ transformation is given using Photoshop. Do you remember the ‘Star Wars’ titles?

The background image of the 404 html page is set to the checkerboard pattern in repeat mode. The integration of all these files resulted in this transparent 404 page of blumblum.com.

More information on 404 pages
This blog entry – ‘Design – 404 Page of antzFx.com’ – has a lot of information on the 404 error, how to set the 404 page in a website and some brilliant 404 designs.

Software: SolidWorks, Photoshop
Design Date: 29-July-2009

404 Research Lab featured blumblum.com’s 404 page as “404 of the Week.” It is filed under the title ‘transparent 404.’ We received a rating of 3.6 out of 5.0. Thank you for voting!

Fab404.com is a collection of fabulous, funny, creative, and weird 404 error pages. On 23-Sep-2009, they featured BlumBlum.com’s 404 page under the category ‘Geeky.’ Thank you guys!

Error 404: File not found

This is what we get when we type in an incorrect website address or when we click an out-dated bookmark. But it seems that somebody has figured out how to lighten the situation by customizing the classic 404 page. Some of them are delightfully hilarious. A huge collection of them is published by SmashingMagazine. See this, this and this.

Our attempt on 404
In our website antzFx.com, we have implemented a customized 404 page. You can have a look at it by clicking here or by typing ‘i_like_mixed_fruit_jam’ or any other message after the ‘antzfx.com/’ in the address bar.

This is our node to the age old ‘help Chotu rabbit to find his way to the carrots’ puzzle. You are in a dead end of the maze with a ‘You are here!’ signage. We are offering a way out by instructing the visitors to click on any other links provided on this page.
What do you think of our design? Post your comments below.

Why 404? Why not 007?
404 is an HTTP status code. For a normal web page, the status is 200 OK. HTTP status codes were established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1992, as a part of the HTTP 0.9 spec. The first 4 indicates a client error. The server is saying that you’ve done something wrong, such as misspell the URL or request a page which is no longer there. The middle 0 refers to a general syntax error. This could indicate a spelling mistake. The last 4 just indicates the specific error in the group of 40x, which also includes 400: Bad Request, 401: Unauthorized, etc.
Read more interesting facts here at 404lab.

How did we do it?
Simple. Added a line in ‘.htaccess’ file in our webserver instructing a redirection to the customized page when an error 404 occurs.
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.antzfx.com/custom_page.htm
More information is available at PageResource.

Softwares: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe DreamWeaver
Design date: 21-Mar-2009

404 Research Lab featured our website’s 404 page as “404 of the Week.” It is filed under the title ‘instructive 404,’ obviously referring to this blog on how we did it. We received a rating of 3.2 out of 5.0. Thank you for voting!

Fab404.com is a collection of fabulous, funny, creative, and weird 404 error pages. On 24-Jul-2009, they featured our website’s 404 page along with a description of “This 404 error page is a-maze-ing.” It is filed under the category ‘Funny.’ Thank you guys!

Bluefaqs is a design blog maintained by Shawn Ramsey. antzFx 404 is listed in the blog entry ’60 Unique 404 Error Pages.’