200 OK + visual feedback on errors: keep it or replace it?

[podliashanyk]

Current situation:

We return 200 OK on errors and supplement it with UI in order to indicate in the browser that there is a HTTP error that occurred.
Pros:

• simplest to maintain
• already implemented (alerts on incidents- and login pages, field errors on destinations page)

Cons:

• misleading by design, so harder to debug in the browser
• less reliable than expected in very rare edge cases (where rendering of UI elements that are ment to signify an error is compromised)

Alternative solutions:

1. response-targets HTMX extension
   What it does is lets you define multiple hx-target attributes on the same element.

Pros:

• proper design, best practice
• reliable HTTP codes in browser debug tools even if rendering of the UI elements is comromised

Cons:

• maintanability overhead since it is an added dependency
• learning curve (although I would say it is minimal once you grasped the hx-target attribute)

Discussion was originally started in #1023, see comments there.