Jittery Web Design

I get a lot of packages, so I sit staring at the Fedex tracking page a lot. They recently redesigned it (to become more “mobile first”, I guess — just a couple decades too late), and I’m just fascinated. I mean, it’s just a minor thing, and it doesn’t matter HANG ON: We’re on the Internet, right? OK, SO THIS IS LITERALLY THE WORST THING EVER LITERALLY. *phew* I was almost reasonable there for a second. But let’s go through what the page does: First we get a white web page. Then the page shows just the header and the footer. Then it expands to show “Tracking ID” and a spinner, and this moves the footer down. Then it replaces the entire page with the tracking results. Half a second later, it blanks to white and then redisplays exactly the same thing it already shows. Finally, two seconds later, it blanks very briefly, redisplays, and adds a button on the bottom saying “Ask Fedex”. That’s just kinda amazing, I think. It doesn’t transfer a lot of data, at least: Just 6.8MB, which is…