Viola WorldWideWeb Hypermedia Browser
Emulator

Info:
On March 9, 1992, the Viola/ViolaWWW browser was released for Unix and X Windows Systems. Although it did not use regular HTML like other browsers, It used its own programming language called Viola.
Here are some examples of the Viola language:

<INSERT SRC="a_quote.html">

<object type="text/html" data="a_quote.html">
<p>This text will appear
for browsers that don't
support OBJECTs</p>
</object>

Embedding a Document in Viola on the Left, Document embedding on 'modern' browser to the right.

 (BODY,INPUT,P   FGColor=black
                 BGColor=grey70
                 BDColor=grey70
                 align=left

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

 body, input, p {
  color: black;
  background-color: #707070;
  text-align: left;
}

 h1 {
  color: white;
  background-color: red;
  border: solid 1px black;
  text-align: center;
}

Viola Style Stylesheet to the Left, Cascading style sheet (CSS) to the Right.

\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} \

function showTimeInDoc() {
  var theTime = document.getElementById('theTime');
  var date = new Date();
  theTime.innerHTML = date.getHours() + ":" + date.getMinutes() + ":" + date.getSeconds();
  setTimeout(showTimeInDoc, 1000);
}

Showing time on Viola document to the Left, Showing time on modern browser to the right.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P>And, the time now is:
<LINK REL="viola"
HREF="showTime.v">
</BODY>
</HTML>

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="showTime.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body onload="showTimeInDoc()">
    <p id="theTime"> </p>
  </body>
</html>

Script Embedding on Viola to the Left, Script embedding on modern browsers to the right.
So it was pretty different if it wasn't obvious enough. Although even though it was the first ever graphical web browser and was even recommened by people at CERN (makers of the worldwideweb), when Mosaic came out it couldn't compete. First off it had its own language, so only if someone else was using Viola then they would be able to see what was on your webpage. So Mosaic took over very quickly, and Viola has remained mostly forgotten. Even google is incorrect about the first ever graphical browser because of how forgotten Viola came. Although Google says it was Erwise, it released over a year after Viola did.

Viola WorldWideWeb Hypermedia BrowserEmulator

Viola WorldWideWeb Hypermedia Browser
Emulator