As pointed out in Mohsen's answer, in ES6 it's possible to extend errors using classes. It's a lot easier and their behavior is more consistent with native errors...but unfortunately it's not a simple matter to use this in the browser if you need to support pre-ES6 browsers. See below for some notes on how that might be implemented, but in the meantime I suggest a relatively simple approach that incorporates some of the best suggestions from other answers:

function CustomError(message) {
    //This is for future compatibility with the ES6 version, which
    //would display a similar message if invoked without the
    //`new` operator.
    if (!(this instanceof CustomError)) {
        throw new TypeError("Constructor 'CustomError' cannot be invoked without 'new'");
    }
    this.message = message;

    //Stack trace in V8
    if (Error.captureStackTrace) {
       Error.captureStackTrace(this, CustomError);
    }
    else this.stack = (new Error).stack;
}
CustomError.prototype = Object.create(Error.prototype);
CustomError.prototype.name = 'CustomError';

In ES6 it's as simple as:

class CustomError extends Error {}

...and you can detect support for ES6 classes with try {eval('class X{}'), but you'll get a syntax error if you attempt to include the ES6 version in a script that's loaded by older browsers. So the only way to support all browsers would be to load a separate script dynamically (e.g. via AJAX or eval()) for browsers that support ES6. A further complication is that eval() isn't supported in all environments (due to Content Security Policies), which may or may not be a consideration for your project.

So for now, either the first approach above or simply using Error directly without trying to extend it seems to be the best that can practically be done for code that needs to support non-ES6 browsers.

There is one other approach that some people might want to consider, which is to use Object.setPrototypeOf() where available to create an error object that's an instance of your custom error type but which looks and behaves more like a native error in the console (thanks to Ben's answer for the recommendation). Here's my take on that approach: https://gist.github.com/mbrowne/fe45db61cea7858d11be933a998926a8. But given that one day we'll be able to just use ES6, personally I'm not sure the complexity of that approach is worth it.

As pointed out in Mohsen's answer, in ES6 it's possible to extend errors using classes. It's a lot easier and their behavior is more consistent with native errors...but unfortunately it's not a simple matter to use this in the browser if you need to support pre-ES6 browsers. See below for some notes on how that might be implemented, but in the meantime I suggest a relatively simple approach that incorporates some of the best suggestions from other answers:

function CustomError(message) {
    //This is for future compatibility with the ES6 version, which
    //would display a similar message if invoked without the
    //`new` operator.
    if (!(this instanceof CustomError)) {
        throw new TypeError("Constructor 'CustomError' cannot be invoked without 'new'");
    }
    this.message = message;

    //Stack trace in V8
    if (Error.captureStackTrace) {
       Error.captureStackTrace(this, CustomError);
    }
    else this.stack = (new Error).stack;
}
CustomError.prototype = Object.create(Error.prototype);
CustomError.prototype.name = 'CustomError';

In ES6 it's as simple as:

class CustomError extends Error {}

...and you can detect support for ES6 classes with try {eval('class X{}'), but you'll get a syntax error if you attempt to include the ES6 version in a script that's loaded by older browsers. So the only way to support all browsers would be to load a separate script dynamically (e.g. via AJAX or eval()) for browsers that support ES6. A further complication is that eval() isn't supported in all environments (due to Content Security Policies), which may or may not be a consideration for your project.

So for now, either the first approach above or simply using Error directly without trying to extend it seems to be the best that can practically be done for code that needs to support non-ES6 browsers.

There is one other approach that some people might want to consider, which is to use Object.setPrototypeOf() where available to create an error object that's an instance of your custom error type but which looks and behaves more like a native error in the console (thanks to Ben's answer for the recommendation). Here's my take on that approach: https://gist.github.com/mbrowne/fe45db61cea7858d11be933a998926a8. But given that one day we'll be able to just use ES6, personally I'm not sure the complexity of that approach is worth it.

As pointed out in Mohsen's answer, in ES6 it's possible to extend errors using classes. It's a lot easier and their behavior is more consistent with native errors...but unfortunately it's not a simple matter to use this in the browser if you need to support pre-ES6 browsers. See below for some notes on how that might be implemented, but in the meantime I suggest a relatively simple approach that incorporates some of the best suggestions from other answers:

function CustomError(message) {
    //This is for future compatibility with the ES6 version, which would display a similar message
    //if invoked without the `new` operator.
    if (!(this instanceof CustomError)) {
        throw new TypeError("Constructor 'CustomError' cannot be invoked without 'new'");
    }
    this.message = message;

    //Stack trace in V8
    if (Error.captureStackTrace) {
       Error.captureStackTrace(this, CustomError);
    }
    else this.stack = (new Error).stack;
}
CustomError.prototype = Object.create(Error.prototype);
CustomError.prototype.name = 'CustomError';

In ES6 it's as simple as:

class CustomError extends Error {}

...and you can detect support for ES6 classes with try {eval('class X{}'), but you'll get a syntax error if you attempt to include the ES6 version in a script that's loaded by older browsers. So the only way to support all browsers would be to load a separate script dynamically (e.g. via AJAX or eval()) for browsers that support ES6. A further complication is that eval() isn't supported in all environments (due to Content Security Policies), which may or may not be a consideration for your project.

So for now, either the first approach above or simply using Error directly without trying to extend it seems to be the best that can practically be done for code that needs to support non-ES6 browsers.

There is one other approach that some people might want to consider, which is to use Object.setPrototypeOf() where available to create an error object that's an instance of your custom error type but which looks and behaves more like a native error in the console (thanks to Ben's answer for the recommendation). Here's my take on that approach: https://gist.github.com/mbrowne/fe45db61cea7858d11be933a998926a8. But given that one day we'll be able to just use ES6, personally I'm not sure the complexity of that approach is worth it.

As pointed out in Mohsen's answer, in ES6 it's possible to extend errors using classes. It's a lot easier and their behavior is more consistent with native errors...but unfortunately it's not a simple matter to use this in the browser if you need to support pre-ES6 browsers. See below for some notes on how that might be implemented, but in the meantime I suggest a relatively simple approach that incorporates some of the best suggestions from other answers:

function CustomError(message) {
    //This is for future compatibility with the ES6 version, which
    //would display a similar message if invoked without the
    //`new` operator.
    if (!(this instanceof CustomError)) {
        throw new TypeError("Constructor 'CustomError' cannot be invoked without 'new'");
    }
    this.message = message;

    //Stack trace in V8
    if (Error.captureStackTrace) {
       Error.captureStackTrace(this, CustomError);
    }
    else this.stack = (new Error).stack;
}
CustomError.prototype = Object.create(Error.prototype);
CustomError.prototype.name = 'CustomError';

In ES6 it's as simple as:

class CustomError extends Error {}

...and you can detect support for ES6 classes with try {eval('class X{}'), but you'll get a syntax error if you attempt to include the ES6 version in a script that's loaded by older browsers. So the only way to support all browsers would be to load a separate script dynamically (e.g. via AJAX or eval()) for browsers that support ES6. A further complication is that eval() isn't supported in all environments (due to Content Security Policies), which may or may not be a consideration for your project.

So for now, either the first approach above or simply using Error directly without trying to extend it seems to be the best that can practically be done for code that needs to support non-ES6 browsers.

There is one other approach that some people might want to consider, which is to use Object.setPrototypeOf() where available to create an error object that's an instance of your custom error type but which looks and behaves more like a native error in the console (thanks to Ben's answer for the recommendation). Here's my take on that approach: https://gist.github.com/mbrowne/fe45db61cea7858d11be933a998926a8. But given that one day we'll be able to just use ES6, personally I'm not sure the complexity of that approach is worth it.