CBC Lite | Release Notes

This page serves as an introduction and release notes for CBC Lite: a low bandwidth service available at CBC.ca/lite.

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The internet is getting bigger, and with it, the amount of information sent for each web page continues to increase. For those lucky enough to have high-speed internet, we now have access to high-definition video and audio streaming, hours of content at our fingertips. Pages can load large, complicated components, and data can zip back and forth at lightning speeds.

Unfortunately these kinds of advances tend to leave others behind.

CBC Lite hopes to begin bridging that gap between accessibility and functionality.

Below, we detail what is new with CBC Lite after each release: changes, improvements, bug fixes, or new features. If you have any feedback on CBC Lite please let us know here and to join our teams at CBC check out our current openings here.

Release Notes (Most Recent First)

1.7.5 | July 15th, 2024

Improvements: New More Stories Like This and backend fixes

• In this release we have also replaced the algorithm which powers the “More Stories Like This” feature which appears at the bottom of story pages. This new model aims to provide better and more related content.
• Additionally we have upgraded some library versions and fixes some bugs.

Feature: Text-to-Speech feature on Stories (feature since Reverted)

• UPDATE: Unfortunately we found some issues with the Text-to-Speech service on some device / browser combinations so are removing this feature for now as we work to fix. Thank you for your patience!

1.7.4 | June 18th, 2024

Changes: Paris 2024 Olympic Games updates and UX improvements

• We have updated our Olympic sections in preparation for the upcoming games. We have also slightly modified our date formats for consistency, as well as de-bolded title text. Some backend improvements were also made.

1.7.3 | May 23rd, 2024

Fixes: Backend bugs and error reporting improvements

• Users shouldn’t notice any changes in this release however we’ve upgraded a few of our library versions and squashed a few bugs.

1.7.2 | May 8th, 2024

Fix: Borders on related radio options

• In this release we’ve fixed some styling while in light mode on the live radio options found on the Canada region sub-pages, they should now appear with a border as expected.

Improvements: Node upgrades and backend migrations

• We have also upgraded our Node version as well as migrated some underlying APIs. Users should not notice any changes from these migrations.

1.7.1 | April 22nd, 2024

Fix: Text contrast for Live Radio

• A quick hotfix for our previous release earlier today. It was noticed some black text was appearing on a black background for the Live Radio One player, this has been fixed so properly contrasted text should now appear.

1.7.0 | April 22nd, 2024

Improvement: Next 14 Upgrade

• In this release we have upgraded our underlying core framework version from Next 12 to Next 14. Users should see no front facing changes from this improvement, however page sizes should be decreased, the application more responsive, and this work opens up some future improvements that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.

Fixes: Line separator in light mode and sorting when Javascript disabled

• In this release we’ve also made some minor bug fixes in our code, namely fixing the sort options when JS is disabled as well as adding a missing line separator when in light mode. Thanks to the users who pointed this out! If you ever notice bugs or have feedback please don’t hesitate to reach out via our feedback form!

1.6.24 | April 15th, 2024

Improvement: Frontend Accessibility and Styling Changes

• Bold move, Cotton. In this release we have updated our styling throughout the site, namely de-bolding much of the text to reduce eye strain and increase readability and modified both some font sizes as well as line heights.

The new homepage styling for CBC Lite

Improvement: Typescript and component improvements

• In this release we have also made some backend improvements, namely introducing some automated Typescript ingestion from our content APIs, as well as some cleanup of the code.

1.6.23 | April 11th, 2024

Fix: Line Height Spacing Issue

• In this release we’ve made a small fix to a line spacing issue some users may have been experiencing where the separation between lines was too large.

1.6.22 | March 25th, 2024

Changes: Updated dependency versions

• No user facing changes in this release, we simply updated some library package versions and backend dependencies.

1.6.21 | March 12th, 2024

Fix: Proper filtering during Topics sort

• While migrating some backend systems we noticed a small bug which would potentially allow video content to appear when sorting by Topics on section pages. Since we do not render videos on CBC Lite these links would lead to a relatively blank page, requiring users to go to the full site to view. As this was unintended we have simply filtered this content so all sort results only return content renderable by Lite or external content producers have inserted.

1.6.20 | March 7th, 2024

Changes: Football and Baseball Sections

• In this release we have retired our dedicated CFL and NFL sections, but all the same content will be available in a merged Football section page. Similarly, the MLB page has also been migrated to a Baseball section page.

1.6.19 | March 5th, 2024

Changes: Footer privacy text and links, other backend updates

The updated privacy text from the footer of all CBC Lite pages

• This release now includes a small text update around privacy in the footer as well as linking to the new privacy page.
• We’ve also made some backend changes: updating some library versions and switching to a newer API.

1.6.18 | February 26th, 2024

The new live Radio One player

Feature: New Live Radio One Player

• We have released a new version of our live Radio One player, available at CBC.ca/lite/radio/live-radio! All the same stations and functionality are available now with a simplified, improved design. We also made some other minor improvements to the codebase.

1.6.17 | February 15th, 2024

Fix: Trending Sort Missing and Opinion Section Retirement

• Users may have noticed the trending sort option had been removed on some section pages, the bug preventing this was discovered and fixed. The “Trending” sort option now properly appears on all pages its available.
• In this release we’ve also updated the title text on the external link icon indicating the URL may lead to an external (non-CBC Lite) page.
• Lastly users will notice the Opinion section has been removed as it is no longer being updated with new content.

1.6.16 | February 6th, 2024

Feature: Basketball Section Page

• In this release we have consolidated our basketball offerings to a new single Basketball section page.

Improvements: Node 20 and Other Fixes

• Additionally we have upgraded our underlying Node version to 20. Users should not notice any visual changes however we hope this leads to longer term stability, performance, and maintainability. We also made some various bug fixes.

1.6.15 | January 8th, 2024

Improvements: Updates to package versions

• In this release users should not notice any significant changes, but we have updated some package versions used by the site to their latest. Some minor bugs were also squashed.

1.6.14 | December 13th, 2023

Feature: Corrections, Clarifications, and Improved Styling

• In this release we have added corrections and clarifications bullet points below stories where applicable. Additionally we have reviewed our styling to make it more consistent across pages. We’ve also made some backend improvements to our code and fixed a bug in the Skip Link on section pages.

1.6.13 | November 28th, 2023

Feature: Professional Women’s Hockey League Page

• This release adds a new page for the PWHL available at https://www.cbc.ca/lite/sports/hockey/pwhl.

Changes: Removing Recommended Lineup

• Previously we offered a personalized “Recommended” selection of articles based on stories previously read by the user. This page was getting very little user traffic, and training this model required resource costs to maintain, so we are deprecating the feature for now.
• Finally, we have updated some configurations in our backend error tracking.

1.6.12 | Nov 20th, 2023

Fixes: Error Analytics Tracking and Prettify

• Users should not notice any changes in this release, we have simply altered some of our analytics configurations for error reporting as well as cleaned up some of our code.

1.6.11 | Nov 16th, 2023

Feature: Parapan Am Games

• In this release we have added pages for the Parapan Am Games starting Nov 17th.

Improvements: Grey Subtext Replaced, Proper External Icons, Header Fixes

• In this release we have also fixed a double H1 header issue appearing on story pages, added external link icons on lineup pages when the link is a non-CBC Lite page, and replaced our instances of grey small text with black or white in light and dark mode respectively in hopes of improving readability.

1.6.10 | Nov 2nd, 2023

Improvements: Render more story types and update library versions

• In this release users shouldn’t notice any visual changes, however we have squashed some bugs, introduced the ability to render an additional story type properly, and updated some of our library versions to latest.

1.6.9 | Oct 18th, 2023

Feature: Algorithmically driven hybrid lineups

• In this release we have introduced a new way of ordering our News content, along with all other CBC News services, using algorithms to assist content producers in ordering the content on News section pages. Users should not notice any changes themselves, but we hope this feature improves quality of the story options as well as reduces effort for those content producers.

1.6.8 | Oct 5th, 2023

Fixes: Proper image widths and other improvements

• In this release we have fixed an issue where some images with an unexpected aspect ratio were appearing with a noticeable border, they should now properly take up the full width based on the device used.
• We have also made a fix to our analytics, as well as resolved a bug in embedded image and video captions on stories. Users should not notice any changes.

1.6.7 | Sept 21st, 2023

Fix: Issues with some older devices and browsers

• In this release we have rolled back one of our core library versions (Next 13 → 12) as some users were experiencing issues when visiting the site’s pages on certain devices and browsers. We hope this release fixes the issues for those users. In order to ensure maintainability for developers we strive to use the latest tools when building our application, however recognize its crucial to remain as compatible as possible with different devices, browsers, and operating systems as we advance.

Feature: Live Radio Links

Live CBC Radio Links

• CBC Lite introduced Live Radio pages a while back, giving users the ability to load any of our Radio One streams. Now in this release we’ve added links to the Live Radio page after the list of articles, and on Canada region pages we have added direct links to those relevant stations. We hope this improves findability of those station pages.

1.6.6 | Sept 11th, 2023

Changes: NAIG page removed and small fixes

• In this release we have removed the dedicated North American Indigenous Games page as its content is no longer being updated now that the games are over.
• We have also made some small fixes and improvements in our back end infrastructure.

1.6.5 | Sept 5th, 2023 | Re-released

• Some users were experiencing issues with this version so it was temporarily rolled back while fixes were made. We hope to have solved some issues users were experiencing, if you ever experience bugs, errors, or have feedback please let us know here, including screenshots and / or step-by-step instructions on how the issue came about is very helpful. Thank you for your patience as we work through bugs!

Change: Node 18 and small bug fixes

• In the updated version of this release we have squashed multiple bugs in our code’s logic as well as upgraded one of our core libraries to a newer version.

Change: Search at top of sitemap

• In this release we’ve moved the “Search” link to the top of the sitemap page for findability, rather than being alphabetically sorted with the rest of our pages.
• We have also updated a number of our libraries to newer versions.

Fixes: External Link Icon and Mobile Full Width

• In this release we have also fixed our bullet point embedded links that appear in stories to properly include an external link icon at the end when those links go to external (non-CBC Lite) pages. We have also fixed a bug when viewing some articles on mobile devices that wasn’t allowing the text use the full width of the device, as well as some other minor improvements.

1.6.4 | July 6th, 2023

Feature: North American Indigenous Games page

• In this release we have added the North American Indigenous Games page in preparation for the games starting on July 15th.

1.6.3 | June 23rd, 2023

Fix: Captions in stories

• It was noticed that some captions on images were not appearing properly, this release fixes this so all captions appear as expected.

1.6.2 | June 7th, 2023

Fix: Updates radio pages to latest player version

• The Edmonton and Calgary radio one live streams were erroring recently when played, this release fixes this so streams play as expected. Also includes some other backend fixes which shouldn’t affect the user experience.

1.6.1 | May 23rd, 2023

Changes: Library version updates, Next image, and styling fixes

• In this release we’ve simply updated some library package versions to their latests, fixed a bug on our embedded next/image components in stories, and modified our Sentry configs for error tracking to help with identifying future issues faster. Users shouldn’t notice any significant changes.

1.6.0 | May 1st, 2023

Changes: React 18, Next 13, and minor improvements

• In this release we’ve upgraded two of our core libraries to their newest versions, namely React 18 and Next.js 13.
• We’ve also made some styling changes to embedded images, videos, and other content in stories and added some new heading levels on section pages in order to help ease navigation.

1.5.9 | April 4th, 2023

Changes: New font and package version updates

• In this release we’ve switched to the official Radio-Canada font from Open Sans. This font will be loaded optionally, typically on second page load or after in order to prevent layout shifts.
• We’ve also updated the versions of some of our libraries to the latest.

1.5.8 | March 15th, 2023

Changes: Images now appear at a slightly higher quality

• In this release we’ve increased the default quality of images loaded within stories slightly. It was noticed that some images were being reduced too significantly and it began to degrade the value of the images themselves. We have tried to balance usefulness of the images with the increase in data usage, as remaining as light as possible is still our main priority.

1.5.7 | March 2nd, 2023

Changes: Available Sports, Canada Reads, and Contact a Newsroom

• In this release we’ve updated the available sports sections shown on the sitemap. We’ve also added the Canada Reads section in preparation for the event. Finally we’ve added a Contact a Newsroom link to the footer for convenience.

Fixes: GQL queries and more node package issues

• We’ve also made some backend improvements replacing some Graph Query Language fields with more up-to-date ones and again cleaned some logic around our node modules. Users should not see any visual changes from these updates.

1.5.6 | February 21st, 2023

Changes: Player, Junos, and backend fixes

• In this release we’ve updated our Radio player to the latest version and fixed some backend code. We’ve also added the Junos sections in preparation for the awards show later in March.
• Users may also notice more articles appearing per section page.

1.5.5 | January 23rd, 2023

Changes: Minor styling and backend improvements

• In this released we’ve changed the styling slightly on some components, namely making input boxes text a bit larger. We’ve also modified some backend configuration for smoother operations going forward.

1.5.4 | December 14th, 2022

Fix: Yet more bugs and general code improvements

• In this release users also won’t notice any major frontend changes, but we’ve updated some internal documentation, cleaned up some of our continuous integration, continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline, and squashed a couple bugs.

1.5.3 | December 8th, 2022

Fix: Bugs and general code improvements

• In this release users won’t notice any major frontend changes, however we’ve updated some of our libraries to their latest versions, cleaned up the codebase, and fixed some minor bugs.

1.5.2 | December 5th, 2022

Fix: Live Radio One

• We’ve released a small fix to our Live Radio One streaming page, some additional unused stations began appearing in error, these have since been removed.

1.5.1 | November 28th, 2022

Feature: Weather Location Override

• We’ve updated our weather page to include the option for users to override their latitude and longitude coordinates.

Weather location override

Feature: External URL Embeds

• We now offer a link within embeds to videos and other external pages for those users that would like to load them. These links open in a new tab and may require higher data usage than CBC Lite pages.

An embed of a YouTube video

1.5.0 | November 3rd, 2022

Changes: Typescript, font sizes, and small fixes

• We’ve updated our codebase to use Typescript, a language built on top of javascript to allow for better code readability and hopefully making future updates easier.
• We’ve also increased our smallest font size slightly to increase readability. Lastly, we squashed some small bugs in our error reporting.

1.4.3 | October 13th, 2022

Feature: Recommended For You Section

• This release introduces a Recommended feature which provides personalized recommendations based on the story you’ve just read. To read more about how this feature works check out our FAQ page on the topic.

Changes: Error Tracking

• We’ve also made some small improvements to our error tracking across pages in order to more quickly capture issues that may arise in the future.

1.4.2 | October 6th, 2022

Fixes: Covid-19 section removal and content package redirects

• We have removed the Covid-19 dedicated section as it is no longer being actively maintained but covid related updates will continue in other relevant sections. We’ve also fixed a bug where some nested content was not being redirected to properly on story pages. Lastly we fixed some miscellaneous bugs and made some minor improvements to our backend code.

1.4.1 | September 27th, 2022

Feature: Frozen Header

• We’ve implemented a frozen header on all pages, meaning the header will remain at the top of page as users scroll through content for easy access. This change came after a user suggested a “scroll back to top” button, as they found they continually had to return to the top to access the header after reading. Hopefully this helps users navigate the site easier and faster.

Changes: Next Layouts, Styling, and other small improvements

• Lite now has Next/Layouts implemented on all our pages, reducing the code complexity on pages and saving some small amount of data usage. This change also allowed us to more easily implement the frozen header mentioned above. We’ve also made some small styling fixes and other code improvements.

1.4.0 | September 1st, 2022

Feature: Progress Bar on Routing

• As recommended by a user, we’ve added a progress bar top of page as users navigate CBC Lite.

Changes: Preact and UX Improvements

• And as recommended by another user, were experimenting with Preact, a lightweight replacement for React, the framework Lite is primarily built with in order to decrease first page load sizes.
• We’ve also cleaned up some styling and fixed a bug where the embed placeholders on some graphs embedded in stories were not displaying properly.

1.3.9 | August 17th, 2022

Fixes: GraphQL and other small fixes

• We’ve removed some libraries to simplify GraphQL requests, the language / service used for data fetching in much of CBC Lite. We were experimenting with a new query provider but have switched back to the old way after discovering some memory issues. We are still exploring a better implementation of these optimizations in the mean time. We also made some minor changes to our UX for consistency across the site.

1.3.8 | August 15th, 2022

Change: New Live Radio Player

• We’ve updated our radio player from an old version to the newly developed one. We hope this makes load the Live Radio pages faster for users and easier to maintain in the future.

The new radio player in dark mode

Changes: Dedicated CBC Lite Help Centre

• We have also launched our own dedicated Lite help space. There we will try to provide help articles around any of the FAQs users may have as they use the Lite service. If you have any questions you’d like answered please let us know!

Fixes: GQL fetches and CI/CD

• We’ve made some small improvements in our fetching logic for pages use GraphQL, a coding language for requesting data, and we’ve updated some backend CI/CD infrastructure used for testing code.

1.3.7 | August 9th, 2022

Feature: Topics Sorting

• In this release we’ve introduced a 4th sorting option by Topics. This sort returns the current section page’s results group by themes as found by the text within the article titles and bodies. It returns any groups with at least two articles from that section found. We hope this helps users find groups of topics they wish to explore.

Changes: Search Sorted by Latest

• Search results at CBC.ca/lite/search are now fetched and returned sorted by latest first. We hope this helps users search for more relevant content faster.

Feature: Search Load More Results

• Related to the changes in search above, we’ve also added a “Load More Results” button to the CBC.ca/lite/search page. This allows users to fetch additional results as they wish.

Example of the “Load More Results” button on /lite/search

1.3.6 | August 3rd, 2022

Feature: Remember Previous Sort Option

• A user request which has been in development a while now; we’ve finally figured out a clean method of “remembering” a user’s previously chosen sort option when they navigate between section pages. Hopefully this helps those users who always prefer a particular sorting option find relevant content faster.

Fixes: Accessibility Fixes and Backend Changes

• We’ve updated some of our buttons to have better aria labels as well as changes to our backend infrastructure on some pages in order to (hopefully) increase load speed. We’ve also added a Skip Link on section pages via first tab to go straight to the content.

Changes: More Stories Like This Improvements

• Previously More Stories Like This would fetch stories from the last 30 days. The new logic first requests stories from the last 30 days and if it seems a large number of results have been returned it re-requests for only the last 7 days of stories. Hopefully things means stories with large amounts of related content will surface more relevant and recent stories.

1.3.5 | June 29th, 2022

Changes: Sort Option Styling, other General Improvements

• We’ve updated our styling on the section page sort options to better fit the rest of the site, as well as updated package versions and cleaned some code logic.

New styling of the sorting options on the news section page

1.3.4 | June 22nd, 2022

Changes: CICD, Section Styling, and General Improvements

• In this release users will notice section page unvisited articles have changed to blue in order to better differentiate from visited articles. We also made some changes to our backend testing pipeline (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment) to add web performance testing to ensure the app remains light and accessible.

1.3.3 | June 7th, 2022

Feature: Weather

• We’ve added a lite weather page, giving users information about current alerts, weather, hourly and weekly forecasts.

Weather page showing Toronto information

Changes: Climate and Environment, Refactors, and Styling

• We’ve also added the ability to view the new Climate and Environment section stories.
• Lastly, we’ve made some small styling changes and code refactors to make the service more efficient and consistent.

1.3.2 | May 17th, 2022

Fixes: Live Radio and Sorting

• A few small bug fixes from our release last week and an update to our error tracking service for the site. Users may have seen an error when navigating directly to a Live Radio page; this has been resolved. If you ever see errors or have general feedback please don’t hesitate to reach out to us via our feedback form.

1.3.1 | May 12th, 2022

Feature: Sorting

• Editors’ Picks was previously always shown for all section pages, now each section page features up to two additional sorting options. Trending, calculated by number of those reading on the full site, and Latest, sorted by most recently published.

Sorting options on the News section page

Feature: Random

• Random is back! On our sections page users can now select “Random” as an option. This will take them to a random story published within the last 30 days with a new button at the top to continue getting random stories.

A random story page

Fixes: CI/CD Improvements and small styling changes

• We’ve improved some of our backend CI/CD testing suite and improved some styling on pages. We’ve also updated some of our libraries and cleaned up the codebase.

1.3.0 | April 4th, 2022

Changes: CSS Fixes, Sections Refactor, and Read events

• Some small css changes, specifically on our error pages in dark mode, and a larger refactor to how the available sections provided via the Sitemap page are fetched. Users shouldn’t notice any major changes, however these upgrades will make future changes much easier. Users may also notice some urls or names of sections have changed.
• Lastly, we’ve added some new event signals in our analytics for getting Read events, fired after a user gets a certain distance down the page. Specifically we’ve implemented this public read-js library, which you can check out for details.

1.2.9 | April 4th, 2022

Feature: CSS Refactor and CBC Lite Dark

• We have just done a CSS refactor, changing the way we style our page’s fonts and colours, in order to maintain cleaner global variables and making future changes hopefully easier and more straightforward. This also allowed us to introduce a dark mode. The website will detect your device colour scheme settings and should switch to the user’s preference if their device supports it. If you have any feedback on dark mode or any other features, please let us know using this form. Thank you!

CBC Lite in dark mode

Fix: Rendering Proper DOM and Radio Refactor

• Some small fixes to how we render our article pages and an update to how we fetch the available radio stations list that appears on the live radio index page.

1.2.8 | February 23rd, 2022

Changes: Removing Olympics specific commentary options

• Now that the games are over we are removing the two options for Indigenous hockey commentary.

Fix: Issues rendering some stories

• We became aware of some issues rendering certain older stories in Lite which did not have all the expected metadata. We updated our logic to make some of these fields optional and not to error the page if they do not exist.

1.2.7 | February 2nd, 2022

Fix: Copy for Indigenous Olympics Hockey commentary

• Small fix on the live radio index options: more specific wording and clarification that it will only be Team Canada hockey games which will have commentary provided.

1.2.6 | January 12th, 2022

Feature: Prep for Olympic Hockey Indigenous commentary streams

• CBC is planning on making live Olympic Hockey commentary available in multiple Indigenous languages. This update adds those streams to the available list on the live radio index options. Unlike the other regional Radio One stations these commentary streams will only be live during the Canadian hockey events. For additional coverage of the entire games make sure to check out our Winter Olympics section page too!

1.2.5 | January 12th, 2022

Changes: Testing suite improvements and small bug fixes

• We’ve made some improvements to our CI/CD pipeline (what tests our code prior to making a production release) to improve both the quality of the tests and their coverage. We also updated some of our packages / libraries and squashed some small bugs.

1.2.4 and 1.2.3 | December 9th, 2021

Fix: Removing the not-so-random Random section

• We released two releases today for the price of one! The first attempted a small fix our random section released yesterday and a second release removed it entirely (for now). Unfortunately there were some unforeseen bugs on CBC Lite’s end causing different users to receive the same “random” results. This is being worked on but in the meantime the feature is being removed while it’s fixed. Apologies, stay tuned! EDIT: This is now fixed, enjoy random stories at CBC.ca/lite/random.

1.2.2 | December 8th, 2021

Changes: Accessibility and UX improvements

• We recently had an external accessibility review and received a bunch of fantastic feedback! We’ve made some updates throughout the site hopefully improving user experience. We’ve also added grey visited links on all our sections, hopefully providing users a faster way to scan for which content they have already visited and which are new.

Changes: Error Monitoring

• We have now integrated our application with an error monitoring tool, allowing us to track performance, bugs, and errors within our application. Hopefully this improves our ability to fix any future issues and narrow down on user problems much faster.

Feature: Random! (since removed and re-added)

• We now offer a Random section page for users who would like more diverse content discovery options. This page simply returns a random list of story content from within the last 30 days, and clicking the “Re-Randomize” button generates a new list. The backend powering this feature was built by the Customization and Machine Learning team (CaML), you can read more about what the team does in their own medium blog here!

An example of the random section page

1.2.1 | November 22nd, 2021

Feature: Search

• We now offer search functionality at CBC.ca/lite/search. This uses the same results as the full site search but only returns content which can properly be rendered in CBC Lite.

example search of “Cape Breton” and results

Changes: UX and Footer

• We have updated the footer and added some new section in the sitemap that were previously not available in CBC Lite: Life, Books, and Comedy.

1.2.0 | October 26th, 2021

Feature: Images

• We now offer a “Load Image” button on all image embed placeholders which allow the users to load a lower bandwidth version of the image.

An optimized loaded image example

Changes: Update Versions and Continuous Integration Suite

• In this update we have upgraded our testing suite which runs on any code changes prior to them being released to production. While users won’t see any changes, this improvement helps ensure future stability and accessibility as we make new updates.

1.1.4 | September 27th, 2021

Fix: North Quebec Radio One

• Adds in the North Quebec live radio one station. We had used an outdated list (whoops!) when we populated the stations and accidentally missed this one.

1.1.3 | August 26th, 2021

Feature: Transcripts for Radio Programs

• CBC produces transcripts for multiple radio programs, the most prominent being The Current and As It Happens. In this release we have added the ability to view The Current and As It Happens as sections via the sections page and can render a text only version of the radio transcript pages (example).

Feature: Live Radio One

• We wanted to add a “lite” version of our CBC.ca/listen pages. This release adds the ability to view a Live Radio One index page to then select and listen to a Radio One region station.
• We also made sure to use the same player as the one on the main site created by our Web Player Products team, just the minimized version. This ensures we don’t have to maintain multiple content player code bases and that any improvements to the full site’s content player are also reflected in CBC Lite. We have also locked these audio streams to the lowest bitrate currently available, hopefully saving some users data and building a more stable connection on low bandwidth speeds, though of course at the sacrifice of some audio quality.

Live Radio One example

1.1.2 | June 30th, 2021

Changes: Replace Graph Query Language Queries

• Our content distribution team is working on an improvement in the structure of some of our content data. This will make fetching and retrieving it more straightforward. However, since CBC Lite expected the information in the old format, those improvements couldn’t be made without affecting CBC Lite. This change removes our reliance on those data fields and allows the Content Distribution team’s improvements to be made.
• To read more on what the Content Distribution team does in CBC Digital, check out their own medium blog here!

1.1.1 | June 14th, 2021

Fix: Mistake lazy loading More Stories Like This

• In the previous release we introduced More Stories Like This, an automated lineup of related stories which appeared at the bottom of each story page. Unfortunately, for some stories there was no related content found, so was returning an empty lineup. Due to an unforeseen quirk of lazy loading the More Stories Like This (read more in previous release), the page would replace the list with the last known list; a list of incorrect stories.
• This was quickly recognized, fixed, and is now displaying a proper message when no related content is found.

More Stories Like This, no content example

1.1.0 | June 14th, 2021

Feature: More Stories Like This

• The Customization and Machine Learning team has built a tool which allows us to automatically fetch related stories to a given CBC story. This is done through word similarity between the stories. You can read more about what the CaML team does in their medium blog here!
• This release adds a More Stories Like This feature at the bottom of story pages which displays up to 5 related stories. These will be stories from the last 30 days.
• Since the tool may take a few seconds to generate the list of related content we don’t want to make the user wait that time before rendering the current story. We use a technique called lazy loading, the process of only rendering what is needed and delaying anything additional until it’s ready. This means the story content will load immediately, and the More Stories Like This feature will display a “Loading…” message until the related content is ready.

More Stories Like This beta feature on stories

1.0.10 | June 1st, 2021

Fix: Mistake in Session Time signals.

• We made a small mistake in our session time signals, this was recognized and fixed. It did not affect user experience but did invalidate any information collected prior to this date.

1.0.9 | May 26th, 2021

Feature: Content Package content

• The full site has introduced a feature which allows for our content teams to dynamically change card placement on some full site pages. This release changes how we fetch our content lineups so CBC Lite can also render those changes properly.
• We also made some small changes in our sections page spacing and removed some sections which were not returning content properly.
• Finally, we worked again with the Analytics and Search team to get session time signals working, giving us the ability to estimate how long users are spending on CBC Lite, hopefully driving better decisions around user needs and future features to be developed. Read more about what the Analytics and Search team does on their medium blog here.

1.0.8 | May 4th, 2021

Changes: Story count, styling, and analytics changes

• We’ve increased the number of stories which appear on a given section page and made some styling changes, namely removing numbering from our section pages and changing the grey colour of our image and video placeholder embeds.
• We also made some more improvements in our analytics data: adding better analytics as users navigate from page to page. Hopefully seeing these user pathways will help us determine how to meet user needs and improve the CBC Lite experience.

screenshot of the homepage

1.0.7 | May 4th, 2021

Changes: Sections and Lead Media

• This release fixed some of our sections that were not returning properly as well as added any lead media to our story content. Lead media is the description line and opening image or video to a given story. In CBC Lite’s case, the image or video is rendered as an embed placeholder if it exists.

1.0.6 | April 26th, 2021

Changes: Science Section

• The “Science & Technology” section is being renamed to “Science”. In this release we change how we fetch the section and display it on the sections page in order to reflect this.

1.0.5 | March 25th, 2021

Feature: Radio and Music Reads sections

• In this release we’ve made the Radio and Music Reads article sections available through the sections page.

Feature: Embedded media placeholders

• In this release we’ve also introduced embedded media placeholders to our stories. This means images, video, graphs, and other media embedded in stories will be rendered with a placeholder displaying the title and caption if they exist.

example of a video embed placeholder

Changes: Styling

• We’ve changed our hyperlink colours from red to blue to match those on our full site.
• We also changed the sizing of our headers and titles to match some rem font size expectations.

1.0.4 | March 4th, 2021

Changes: Header and Footer improvements

• In this release we improved the header and footer components that appear at the top and bottom of each CBC Lite page, respectively. This has reduced some code logic that was duplicated and ensures a more consistent user experience.

1.0.3 | February 23rd, 2021

Changes: Proper Single Page Application and accessibility fixes

• Internal links going from one CBC Lite page to another now properly utilize the single page application nature of our app. This means pages will only load that information on the page that is new, rather than re-rendering the same thing twice as people navigate from page to page.
• We also reduced the size of our favicon, the little CBC icon that appears in your browser tab. Ironically this little image was previously making up a significant portion of first page load, but its size has now been reduced and only needs to be loaded a single time. We also improved some rendering on the mobile experience.
• Some proper web tags were added to our pages and did some cleanup of our list objects. This didn’t make any visual changes in CBC Lite but hopefully improves the accessibility of our pages for some users.

Changes: Testing Suite

• In this release we were also excited to deploy our automated testing suite. We worked with our Developer Operations team in order to use Jenkins to build a CI/CD pipeline. This is a fancy way of saying our future releases will have tests run against them and will be deployed to different environments automatically. This helps ensure the future stability of the CBC Lite service and that future changes don’t break our low bandwidth and accessibility requirements.

1.0.2 | February 5th, 2021

Announcement: Production Launch

• Today we officially launched the public facing production version of CBC Lite. Initially the service was only promoted internally and to a small group of early testers in order to ensure its stability before the more formal public launch.

1.0.1 | February 1st, 2021

Changes: Sections index page and rem

• In this release we introduced the first version of the sections page, allowing users to choose between different sections, rather than only the trending news section available on the homepage. A sections link was added to the header at the top of every CBC Lite page.
• We also replaced any instances of px (pixel) to rem in our styling. This is the means of deciding the sizes of the text characters on the page, and by switching to these ‘rem’ units it allows users to set sizing on their own devices and have the page automatically resize to reflect that. This hopefully improves accessibility for some.

1.0.0 | December 14th, 2020

Announcement: Project Summary document and internal release.

• In order to explain the project to those not familiar with it a summary document has been created. This details the current state of the application, a timeline of the project, and what is yet to be decided. This was then shared throughout the department and abroad.
• We also released a usable version of CBC Lite only available internally to get some initial testers.

beta version of the homepage

Feature: Story pages.

• We can now render a basic story page from our section pages. With section and story pages working, a minimal usable version of the service has now been created.

beta version of a story page

Beta 0.1.0 | December 2020

Feature: Dynamic page sizing and routing

• CBC Lite will now dynamically change the page size depending on the device the user is using. This means stories and sections on mobile, tablet, and desktop devices will display properly.
• Routing (the URLs used for pages) now works to render CBC sections from a list of available sections. For example, this means users can navigate to cbc.ca/lite/news to get to the news section or cbc.ca/lite/news/canada/north to get to the News Canada North section. We get these sections of stories from our CMS through services maintained by our Content Distribution team. You can read more about them in their Medium blog here!

Beta 0.0.1 | October 2020

Changes: Stash, Jira, and Confluence accounts

• It may seem insignificant to some, but getting proper accounts set up for internal tickets and documentation is a crucial step to creating a maintainable product or service. A process in itself, we have now switched over all our code bases to a proper Bitbucket account (the service we use for storing code remotely), and have linked it with Jira and Confluence accounts for creating tickets and documentation respectively.

Beta | September 2020

Announcement: Integrated Demo presentation

• With development of the section pages underway and a simple text version of story pages completed we reached out at our monthly Integrated Demo meeting for help across the department. The Integrated Demo is a chance for anyone within the department to share work and demo any progress that has been made. From here we began looking at moving CBC Lite into a more official project.

Alpha | June 2020

Meeting: Development Brainstorming meeting

• Picking up from the original innovation sprint pitch a group from across the department got together for the creation of a proposal document detailing minimal specifications, any features we’d eventually like to see, and a rough schedule for time lining.
• We decided at minimal we needed a way to render our main articles and sections. We could fetch these sections (or lists of articles under a common grouping) from our CMS. CMS stands for Content Management System, and is also the name of the team which manages this system that stores our sections and article content. You can read more about what the CMS team does in their Medium blog here!
• From this a few developers began deciding on a framework and building.

The Beginning | December 2019

Pitch: The Innovation Sprint

• A CBC Lite website was pitched at the Digital Product’s Innovation Sprint. The group came together to show the need for a low bandwidth, accessibility focused service and to pitch how it might be done. You can read more about our department Innovation Sprints on the Medium blog here.

Thank You!

You’re all caught up! Thanks so much for your interest in CBC Lite.

Again, if you have any feedback on CBC Lite please let us know here, and to join our teams at CBC check out our current openings here.