I had to go to the FedEx website to track a package this week, and I was pretty disappointed. While, I was able to track my package, I was surprised to see that the little tracking box was built in Flash. You can see the exact box that I am talking about in the image that follows.
So I thought, whatever it’s done in Flash, I’m sure they have an HTML equivalent if someone does not have the Flash plugin installed or if they have Javascript disabled. Boy was I wrong…
Below is a screenshot of the page when Javascript is enabled:
Now, here is what the page looks like when Javascript is disabled:
Jesus, it looks like the page exploded. Not only does the tracking box go away, but the page looks completely awful.
I know, I know, you are saying, “but everyone has Javascript enabled and a Flash plugin installed”. Ah, I beg to differ, approximately 4% of users have Javascript disabled. Yeah that looks like a small number, but when you are huge company like FedEx, that turns out to be a lot of people.
Honestly, how hard is it to have an HTML alternative to the little Flash tracking box? A textbox and a button, how complicated!
It’s pathetic that huge companies are still making terrible decisions like this on their web site. When will they learn?
";s:13:"numberOfLikes";N;s:10:"bodyBlocks";a:0:{}}}}}i:1;O:25:"yii\caching\TagDependency":3:{s:4:"tags";a:4:{i:0;s:7:"element";i:1;s:29:"element::craft\elements\Entry";i:2;s:40:"element::craft\elements\Entry::section:4";i:3;s:7:"graphql";}s:4:"data";a:4:{s:40:"CraftCMSce35088bdfe0816226cd17fd051a4803";s:21:"0.70573500 1736501960";s:40:"CraftCMS2743a789e8993267a348eee1ee7e4450";s:21:"0.67537500 1713205687";s:40:"CraftCMS2ac34726f299f7e18e449d8e536c67f8";s:21:"0.84529700 1741778847";s:40:"CraftCMS3817d4a648fcfac939af46605323feb0";s:21:"0.36746500 1735923287";}s:8:"reusable";b:0;}}