Editing ViolaWWW

{{Short description|Popular web browser in the early 1990s}}
{{Infobox software
| name                   = ViolaWWW
| logo                   =
| screenshot             = ViolaWWW.png
| caption                = ViolaWWW 3.3
| developer              = [[Pei-Yuan Wei]]<ref name="faq">{{cite web |url=http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html#browser |title=What were the first WWW browsers? |publisher=[[World Wide Web Consortium]] |author=Tim Berners-Lee |author-link=Tim Berners-Lee |access-date=2010-06-15}}</ref>
| released               = {{Start date and age|1992|03|09}}<ref name="about"/>
| discontinued           = yes
| programming language   = Viola<ref name="faq"/><ref>See [http://www.viola.org/viola/book/toc.html Viola in a Nutshell] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190909144946/http://www.viola.org/viola/book/toc.html |date=2019-09-09 }} for details.</ref>
| operating system       = [[Unix]]<ref name="faq"/>
| language               = English
| genre                  = [[Web browser]]
| license                =
| website                = {{URL|viola.org}}
}}
'''ViolaWWW''' is a discontinued [[web browser]], the first to support [[Scripting language|scripting]] and [[Style sheet (web development)|stylesheets]] for the [[World Wide Web]] (WWW). It was first released in 1991/1992 for [[Unix]] and acted as the recommended browser at [[CERN]],<ref name="faq"/> where the WWW was invented, but eventually lost its position as most frequently used browser to [[Mosaic (web browser)|Mosaic]].

==Viola==
Released in 1992,<ref name="about" /> Viola was the invention of [[Pei-Yuan Wei]], a member of the [[eXperimental Computing Facility|Experimental Computing Facility]] (XCF) at the [[University of California, Berkeley]].<ref name="faq" /><ref name="about">{{cite web|title=ViolaWWW Hypertext Browser|url=http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/Viola/violaWWWAbout.html|access-date=28 July 2010|author=Pei-Yuan Wei|author-link=Pei-Yuan Wei}}</ref> Viola was a [[UNIX]]-based programming/scripting language; the [[acronym]] stood for "Visually Interactive Object-oriented Language and Application".<ref name="GilliesCailliau2000"/>

Pei's interest in graphically based software began with [[HyperCard]], which he first encountered in 1989. Of that, Pei said, "HyperCard was very compelling back then, you know graphically, this hyperlink thing, it was just not very global and it only worked on Mac... and I didn't even have a Mac". Only having access to [[X terminal]]s, Pei, in 1990, created the first version of Viola for such terminals: "I got a HyperCard manual and looked at it and just basically took the concepts and implemented them..."<ref name="GilliesCailliau2000">{{cite book|author1=James Gillies|author2=R. Cailliau|title=How the Web was born: the story of the World Wide Web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pIH-JijUNS0C&pg=PA213|year=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-286207-5|pages=213–217}}</ref>

Pei released Viola 0.8 in 1991.<ref name="GilliesCailliau2000" />

== History of ViolaWWW ==

After graduating, Pei developed Viola further while working with the XCF and startups.<ref name="GilliesCailliau2000"/><ref>{{cite web|title=WWW people|url=http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/People.html|publisher=[[World Wide Web Consortium]]|access-date=28 July 2010}}</ref> Later, he would be funded by [[O'Reilly Books]], the technical publisher, which used the software to help demonstrate its [[Global Network Navigator]] site.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/22/kindle-oreilly-ebooks-technology-breakthroughs_oreilly.html | work=Forbes | first=Tim | last=O'Reilly | title=Why Kindle Should Be An Open Book | date=23 February 2009}}</ref> His major goal was to create a version of Viola for the Internet:

{{blockquote|X-Window ''[sic]'' was a Unix-based system so it had [[TCP/IP]] built in and the Internet was a logical step.  The question was how to transport his Viola pages across the Internet.  He was on the verge of an independent invention of networked hypertext. 'And that's when I read [[Tim Berners-Lee|Tim's]] [[e-mail]] about the [[World Wide Web]]' he explains. 'The [[URL]] was very, very clever, it was perfectly what I needed. He dropped Tim a line saying that he was thinking of writing a browser for X. 'Sounds like a good idea,' said Tim in a reply posted to www-talk on 9 December [1991]. Four days later, Pei Wei told www-talk that he had made a browser.|Gillies and Cailliau<ref name="GilliesCailliau2000"/>}}

Released in 1992, ViolaWWW was the first browser to add extended functionality such as embedded scriptable objects, stylesheets, and tables. Early versions were received well at [[CERN]].<ref name="GilliesCailliau2000"/> [[Ed Krol]] also highlighted the browser in his popular 1992 text, ''[[Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog]]''.

As ViolaWWW developed, it began to look more like HyperCard:

{{blockquote|It had a [[Bookmark (digital)|bookmark]] facility so that you could keep track of your favourite pages. It had buttons for going backwards and forwards and a history feature to keep track of the places you had been. As time went on, it acquired tables and graphics and by May 1993 it could even run programs.|Gillies and Cailliau<ref name="GilliesCailliau2000"/>}}

ViolaWWW was based on the Viola toolkit, which is a tool for the development and support of visual interactive media applications, with a multimedia web browser being a possible application. Viola ran under the [[X Window System]] and could be used to build complex [[hypermedia]] applications with features like applets and other interactive content as early as 1992.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/51/webexny2010_what-is-web-20.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120215100147/http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/51/webexny2010_what-is-web-20.pdf |archive-date=2012-02-15 | title=What is Web 2.0? - Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software | author=Tim O’Reilly | publisher=O'Reilly Media}}</ref>

===Firsts===
Viola was the first web browser to have the following features:<ref name="timblhistory">{{cite web|last=Berners-Lee|first=Tim|title=A Brief History of the Web|url=http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TimBook-old/History.html|publisher=[[World Wide Web Consortium]]|access-date=17 August 2010|author-link=Tim Berners-Lee|orig-year=c.1993|date=9 August 1997}}</ref>

* client-side document insertion, predating [[Framing (World Wide Web)|frames]], or syndication via JavaScript output writing, which are used commonly today.

{| class="wikitable" style="width: 100%;"
|- valign="top" align="left"
! Viola-style document embedding
! Object method
|- valign="top" align="left"
| style="text-align:left" | <syntaxhighlight lang="xml">
<INSERT SRC="a_quote.html">
</syntaxhighlight>
| style="text-align:left" |<syntaxhighlight lang="html">
<object type="text/html" data="a_quote.html">
<p>This text will appear
for browsers that don't
support OBJECTs</p>
</object>
</syntaxhighlight>
|}

* a simple stylesheet mechanism used for inserting style information such as fonts, color and alignments into a document.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chapter 14, Stylesheet |url=http://viola.org/viola/book/chp14.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118233304/http://viola.org/viola/book/chp14.html |archive-date=2022-01-18 |website=Viola in a Nutshell}}</ref> This was implemented in Viola well before [[Cascading Style Sheets|CSS]] was developed in 1996:

{| class="wikitable" style="width: 100%;"
|- valign="top" align="left"
! A viola-style stylesheet
! A CSS stylesheet
|- valign="top" align="left"
| style="text-align:left" | <pre><nowiki>
 (BODY,INPUT,P   FGColor=black
                 BGColor=grey70
                 BDColor=grey70
                 align=left

 (H1             FGColor=white
                 BGColor=red
                 BDColor=black
                 align=center

</nowiki></pre>
| style="text-align:left" | <syntaxhighlight lang="css">
 body, input, p {
  color: black;
  background-color: #707070;
  text-align: left;
}

 h1 {
  color: white;
  background-color: red;
  border: solid 1px black;
  text-align: center;
}
</syntaxhighlight>
|}

* a sidebar panel used for displaying "meta" information, intra document navigational links, and other information, similar to (but not as sophisticated as) features found in several modern browsers.
* a [[scripting language]] that can be accessed from an [[HTML]] document,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chapter 13, Extensibility |url=http://viola.org/viola/book/chp13.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118223211/http://viola.org/viola/book/chp13.html |archive-date=2022-01-18 |website=Viola in a Nutshell}}</ref> such that an HTML document can embed highly interactive scripts/applets.  This can be seen as the precursor to [[JavaScript]] and embedded objects.

{| class="wikitable" style="width: 100%;"
|- valign="top" align="left" style="font-size: 90%"
!
! style="width:40%" | ViolaWWW method
! style="width:60%" | [[JavaScript]] equivalent
|- valign="top" align="left" style="font-size: 90%"
! Scripting
| style="text-align:left" |<syntaxhighlight lang="javascript">
\class {txtDisp}
\name {showTime}
\script { switch (arg[0]) {
  case "tick":
    set("content"), date());
    after(1000, self(), "tick");
    return; break;
  case "init":
    after(1000, self(), "tick");
    break;
  }
  usual();
}
\width {100}
\height {50} \
</syntaxhighlight>
| style="text-align:left" |<syntaxhighlight lang="javascript">
function showTimeInDoc() {
  var theTime = document.getElementById('theTime');
  var date = new Date();
  theTime.innerHTML = date.getHours() + ":" + date.getMinutes() + ":" + date.getSeconds();
  setTimeout(showTimeInDoc, 1000);
}
</syntaxhighlight>
|- align="left" valign="top" style="font-size: 90%"
! Embedding a script into a web page
| style="text-align:left" | <syntaxhighlight lang="html">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
And, the time now is:
<LINK REL="viola"
HREF="showTime.v">
</BODY>
</HTML>

</syntaxhighlight>
| style="text-align:left" | <syntaxhighlight lang="html">
<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="showTime.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body onload="showTimeInDoc()">
    <p id="theTime">&nbsp;</p>
  </body>
</html>
</syntaxhighlight>
|}

* Forms<ref>{{cite web |title=ViolaWWW |url=https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history/violawww-1992 |website=webdesignmuseum.org |publisher=Web Design Museum |access-date=17 February 2022}}</ref>

==Competing against Mosaic==
While ViolaWWW opened the door to the World Wide Web,<ref name="timblhistory"/> its limitations, including it only being implemented on the X Window System, meant it could not compete with [[Mosaic (web browser)|Mosaic]], the browser which brought the Web into the mainstream.<ref>{{cite web |title=Mosaic -- The First Global Web Browser |url=http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_mosaic.htm |access-date=28 July 2010}}</ref> Among other things, Mosaic was easier to install on the computers most people were using.<ref name="timblhistory"/> Originally developed for [[UNIX]], Mosaic was soon ported to [[Microsoft Windows]],<ref>Freedman, Alan. ''Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, 9th Edition.'' New York: Osborne, 2001, p. 629</ref> a platform on which ViolaWWW never ran.

==ViolaWWW in patent lawsuits==

In 1999, [[Eolas Technologies]] and the [[University of California]] filed suit in the [[US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois]] against Microsoft, claiming infringement of U.S. patent 5,838,906, (covering browser [[Plug-in (computing)|plugins]]) by the [[Internet Explorer]] web browser. Eolas won the initial case in August 2003 and was awarded damages of ${{Formatprice|521000000|3}} from Microsoft.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-plugins/2003Oct/0000.html |title=Eolas Technologies, Inc., and The Regents of the University of California v. Microsoft Corporation}} 99 C 626</ref> The District Court reaffirmed the jury's decision in January 2004.

In March 2005, an appeals court directed that there be a retrial, overturning a decision that Microsoft pay $521 million in damages. The appeals court said that the initial ruling had ignored two key arguments put forward by Microsoft. Microsoft had wanted to show the court that ViolaWWW was [[prior art]], since it was created in 1993 at the University of California, a year before the key patent were filed. Microsoft had also suggested that Michael David Doyle, Eolas' founder and a former University of California researcher, had intentionally concealed his knowledge of ViolaWWW when filing the patent claim.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4314989.stm  Court stays $521m Microsoft fine], [[BBC News]], March 3, 2005.</ref> Microsoft subsequently settled with Eolas, in August 2007, without a retrial.<ref>{{cite news  | title = High-profile, 8-year patent dispute settled  | url = http://www.seattlepi.com/business/329766_msfteolas31.html  | newspaper = Seattle Post-Intelligencer  | date = 2007-08-30 }}</ref> Eolas continued to file suits against dozens of other technology companies.

In February 2012 a Texas jury found that two of Eolas' patents were invalid after testimony from several defendants including Tim Berners-Lee and Pei-Yuan Wei, credited as creator of the Viola browser. The testimony professed that the Viola browser included Eolas' claimed inventions before the filing date (September 7, 1993). There is "substantial evidence that Viola was publicly known and used" before the plaintiffs' alleged conception date, it added. The ruling effectively ended a pending lawsuit against 22 companies including [[Yahoo]], [[Google]], and many online retailers.<ref>{{cite news|last=Samuels|first=Julie|title=Why the Patent System Doesn't Play Well with Software: If Eolas Went the Other Way|url=https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/why-patent-system-doesnt-play|newspaper=Electronic Frontier Foundation|date=February 15, 2012}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[History of the World Wide Web]]
* [[History of the web browser]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* {{Official website|viola.org}}
* {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100625180207/http://www.xcf.berkeley.edu/~wei/viola/aboutEolasMicrosoft.html |date=June 25, 2010 |title=Personal Comments on Eolas vs Microsoft, and the Viola Prior Art }}
* {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030926120826/http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/workshop/slides/wei/talk.html |date=September 26, 2003 |title=Presentation- Extensibility in WWW Browsers }}
* [http://ftp.cuhk.hk/pub/packages/info-systems/www/viola/ Download Viola]

{{Early web browsers}}

[[Category:POSIX web browsers]]
[[Category:1991 software]]
[[Category:1992 software]]
[[Category:Discontinued web browsers]]