[Dedime]

I surprised you didn't link Kelowna's finest newspaper, Castanet: https://www.castanet.net/news/BC/351544/Mudslides-close-all-...

I love them because their reporting is terrible and the site itself is straight out of the 90's. They used to run polls that were easy to manipulate, according to a ex-coworker of mine. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Nonetheless, everybody in Kelowna acts like Castanet is the one true source of information...

[dleslie]

Castanet is gloriously imperfect. I hope they never change and never fade away.

It's exactly what it looks like: a hodge-podged effort by some local folks with little experience and ability among them, besides an earnest desire to report local news with a local perspective, that has stood the test of time (it launched in 2000!).

[mattmanser]

So, an outsider's perspective:

1. It loads super quick

2. The list of articles is clear and easy to scan

3. There aren't a shit ton of adverts

4. There are no bloody popups, cookie notices, donate banners, etc.

5. The entire page doesn't load, me start reading then suddenly completely greyed out with an overlay because of badly implemented 4

6. No auto-playing videos that are impossible to find to stop

If this is 90s web design that's "a train wreck in slow motion" and "gloriously imperfect", can we all go back to the 90s please?

[chubot]

Yeah it's more usable than 95% of the websites I visit, e.g. pretty much every news site, Reddit, etc.

[mr_sturd]

To add to this, it appears to work perfectly without lifting any of my NoScript restrictions.

[tailspin2019]

Is this a perspective on Castanet?

Because there is literally at least one super distracting animated GIF ad in view 100% of the time while I scroll that page (which, on my iPhone, is not exactly easily readable due to lack of responsiveness).

On the OP article I see zero ads but I think that’s possibly my PiHole kicking in (which notable fails to block any of the presumably locally hosted adds on Castanet).

I agree with some of your other points but let’s not go to far :)

[dleslie]

The key with 90s web design is the relative absence of Javascript. There's virtually no asynchronous requests; and Castanet works fine with NoScript, most modern sites do not.

[dylan604]

I understand where you're coming from, but I came from 90s webdev. The gift of aysnc requests was the one true credit I give MS for their contribution to moving the web forward (even if it might have been self-serving). The fact that we no longer had to do full screen refreshes to update one part of the page was glorious. It helped allow the deprecation of frames.

However, just like all good things, people decided if a little is good more would be better. This is why we can't have nice things, but it doesn't mean that the thing itself isn't nice.

[nitrogen]

This goes back to the distinction between web pages/documents (deliver immutable server-side content once, up front) and web apps (lots of back and forth with mutable data on the server). A news website should never be anything except pages, even with interactive content, but it seems almost nobody can resist the urge to treat everything like an app.

[dylan604]

Not every website is a news site, nor is every non-newsite an app. Having a website that functions as a store front and information page so that 90% of the site is static, yet dynamically being able to add things to a cart is an example. Is that an app? But not having to do a full page refresh on a POST to add an item to a cart is glorius.

Just because the webiste in question of this thread is a newsite doesn't mean we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater because it fits this one category.

[djbusby]

I like to think of my App as a collection of Pages. While it does "stuff" we think of implementation Page first.

Then clients say your app is fast and responsive but what they really mean is that we've not built an obese chimera.

[toss1]

Seconded.

Not only that, I didn't even have to touch NoScript - it all apparently loaded perfectly. Wow, it'd be nice if much more of the internet was like this!

[r00fus]

and no paywall!

This site is great!

[EGreg]

Is it just me or was Castanet some sort of Internet things besides Vancouver news?

I remember digicrime.com making fun of it. And they had all these “services” where they exploited browser problems like endless popups etc — they specifically said they don’t do spam because they can just sign you up for tons of spam and let those marketers do the work haha

Anyone remember that? (“it is now unsafe to turn on your computer”)

[kryz]

Castanet’s true genius is that it was founded by a guy who owned a bunch of radio stations and thus still sells advertising that way. $xxxx/mo for a rotating 250x250

How many people will see it? Mmm about this many hands outstretched as big as a salmon

The thing prints money as local businesses funnel all their advertising budgets to it.

No expectation of performance, like buying a newspaper ad lol

[int_19h]

OTOH they seem to be hosting all their ads directly on their server, so e.g. PiHole doesn't block them.

[gigglesupstairs]

Holy heck it looks dope, straight out of 90s. I’m surprised it works well with Safari’s Reader though.

[cormacrelf]

Reader and similar plugins have it easy on 90s websites. It's the 2010s onwards you have to worry about.

[OJFord]

It's running through Cloudflare & hcaptcha, the aesthetic may be '90s, but it doesn't mean the code is necessarily.

[varenc]

I actually love this site. So refreshing. Feels like a homepage put together very manually by people that really care.

Love the "Around The Web" section and how it genuinely just wants you to see a video of a cat playing piano [0]. No aggressive ad placement or fake product review schemes. Just an awesome video of a cat they wanted to share.

Edit: And it seems polling system for "How does this story make you feel?" only relies on cookies to prevent duplicate votes... So I sent them 100 votes for "Awesome"

[0] https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-story-351694-25-.htm#3...

[cgh]

It’s not just Kelowna, it’s the entire Okanagan valley. My mother-in-law lives in Summerland and she swears by Castanet as the one true news source.

[ospzfmbbzr]

The terrible reporting assessment is very accurate. Castanet got lucky and capitalized on a strong desire for local content and also the fact that big players did traditionally ignore the Kelowna media market. Kelowna only really became a bigger city after the Coquihalla Highway was built in 86 to 88 (in stages and Kelowna was last link) and the attitude towards it from outside media took a long time to catch up.

[soupbowl]

I can confirm that the poll is still easy to manipulate. I enjoyed and agree with all your comments about castanet.

[lai-yin]

As an American working in politics who's jacked into the daily Politico/WSJ/Twitter grind it warms my heart to briefly imagine that all Canadians get their news from quirky, local newspapers like this.

[itronitron]

+1 for the link on their front page to a 'Tuesday Meme Dump'

[_3u10]

Castanet, hits ya right in the feels.

[sleepysysadmin]

wow. their website is fantastic.