Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by greenpizza13 3372 days ago
Ha. No thanks. If I go to use FedEx and flash is required I'm just going to use a different carrier.

They are just delaying the inevitable. I bet there's some higher-ups at FedEx who still like flash and refuse to give it up.

3 comments

> I bet there's some higher-ups at FedEx who still like flash and refuse to give it up.

I suspect this is just a delaying action - a vain attempt to retain some of their web order volume - while they frantically write the replacement for their Flash component.

Yeah, it basically seems like an "oh shit, we're sorry our site is so ancient, here, have this coupon code so you save some money and don't jump ship instead".

Seems like a reasonable stopgap as long as they're working on fixing it.

Then again, Flash has been deprecated for almost 10 years already. When the original iPhone famously came out with a no Flash policy back in 2007, the technical community knew that it was a dead format. Even granting the general corporate mindset of dragging your feet there has been plenty of time to source a replacement for Flash in your ecosystem.
I bet all that hindsight really helps you sound like some sort of visionary. Flash was alive and well long after the introduction of the iPhone. Ignoring the fact it was hardly available internationally, and only on a single carrier in the United States. Nerds hated Flash, but it was still seen as a somewhat acceptable and expected technology to come across.
This is for their print publishing places called FedEx Office. A lot of these places used to be Kinkos locations before they acquired them. They use flash to let you preview your print jobs before sending them off. Moving off flash is non-trivial for them.
Probably just didn't think it would be an issue and refused to fund the site migration. Which is strange, what have they been doing for mobile? Turns out, when people switch that shit off in default no one's going to turn it back on.
They're mobile site is despicable. UPS has a decent mobile site and very decent (even good) app. Brown shirts are winning.
From what I hear, shipping is tough these days since Amazon delivers the small stuff and tasks big items to the shipping companies. The margin is in lots of small packages, it's tough to make money from a truck that is only delivering big stuff.

Point being, winning is relative.