ViolaWWW is an extensible World Wide Web hypermedia browser.
A new release is hereby announced.
Based on and drawing from the Viola scripting language and toolkit,
ViolaWWW provides a way to build relatively complex hypermedia applications
that are beyond the provisions of the current HTML standard.
Background information: Viola is a toolkit for hypermedia development,
publishing, and browsing. It is basically a toolkit consisting of a
scripting language, a graphical user interface, and an object-oriented
data storage system. ViolaWWW is an application of the Viola toolkit.
For more information>> http://berkeley.ora.com/proj/viola/violaHome.html
Notable features in the new ViolaWWW
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* Fundamentally HTML 3.0 (ie: highly container based), plus many extensions
for richer formatting capabilities. Extensions such as for multiple
columns formatting, document insertion (client side), and dynamically
collapsable/expandable list.
* Sidebar panel: for displaying "meta" information, or for intra document
navigational links, etc. The panel is engaged and disengaged by the
presence of the document that is associated with the sidebar document.
* Dynamic toolbar: document engaged tool applets (ie: navigational aids).
* Rudimentary stylesheet mechanism for attaching styling information to
a document. For changing document's fonts, color information, alignments.
* A scripting language that is accessible from the HTML, such that an HTML
document can embbed highly interactive scripts/applets.
* Miscellaneous niceties: hotlist facility; shows HTTP loading progress
in a pie chart (when it has the information).
* An experimental platform. It's source available, even most of the
browser is constructed in a highlevel scripting language; and is very
customizable to someone who understands the scripting language.
* Motif front-end. The X11 (non Motif) version is also available.
* Self contained single binary for easy installation, unlike the old
ViolaWWW which required setup of various viola application files.
Availability
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Source and binary can be found in ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/www/viola.
Platform: Unix/XWindows. Sparc binary is supplied.
Pei Wei (wei@ora.com)
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.