Arena (web browser)
Encyclopedia
The Arena browser was an early testbed
web browser
and web authoring tool for Unix
. Originally authored by Dave Raggett
in 1993, the browser continued its development at CERN
and the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) and subsequently by Yggdrasil Computing. As a testbed browser, Arena was used in testing the implementation for HTML3, Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS), Portable Network Graphics (PNG), and libwww
. Arena was widely used and popular at the beginning of the World Wide Web
.
Arena, which predated Netscape Navigator
and Microsoft
's Internet Explorer
, featured a number of innovations which were later used in commercial products. It was the first browser to support background images, tables, text flow around images, and inline mathematical expressions.
The Arena browser served as the W3C's testbed browser from 1994 to 1996 when it was succeeded by the Amaya
project.
(HP) in Bristol, England
devoted his spare time to developing Arena on which he hoped to demonstrate new and future HTML specifications. Development of the browser was slow because Raggett was the lone developer and HP, which like many other computer corporations at the time, was unconvinced that the Internet would succeed and thus did not consider investing in web browser
development. Raggett demonstrated the browser at the first World Wide Web Conference
in Geneva, Switzerland
in 1994 and the 1994 ISOC
conference in Prague
to show text flow around images, forms, and other aspects of HTML later termed as the HTML+ specification. Raggett subsequently partnered with CERN, to develop Arena further as a proof of concept
browser for this work. Using the Arena browser, Dave Raggett, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, Håkon Wium Lie
and others demonstrated text flow around a figure with captions, resizable tables, image backgrounds, HTML math, and other features. At the Web World conference in Orlando
, in early 1995, Raggett demonstrated the different new features of Arena.
Since July 1994 Lie was integrating libwww and CSS and helping Raggett. In October 1995, Yves Lafon joined the team for a year to provide support for HTML form and style sheet
development.
Arena was originally released for Unix
, and although there was talk of a Windows
and Macintosh
port
, neither came to fruition.
Despite its time of development, Arena is in certain areas a relatively modern browser; because it functioned as a testbed, it saw the implementation of new technologies long before they became mainstream, i.e. CSS. Arena implemented many elements of the HTML3 and HTML3.2 specification including math elements that were deprecated in HTML4, HTML tables, and experimental style sheets.
of earlier software build
s are not well documented, because the developers didn't want to distribute the source code until they considered the browser to be stable. In version 0.95, support for inline JPEG
images was added. In version 0.96, support was added for the FTP
, NNTP
, and Gopher protocols
, as well as experimental support for CSS. In Arena 0.98 Dave Beckett added full PNG support.
operating system
support and reimplementing CSS (which was still a Working Draft).
The W3C and the INRIA, a French national research institution, gave additional funding to develop CSS. To better implement and write CSS, an experimental style sheet for Arena was developed. On 22 May 1996, the W3C announced that Amaya will replace Arena as their new testbed and that the W3C was looking for new maintainer because the W3C didn't have the resources for two testbeds.
for communicating with other applications. Also, the internal component libwww was updated to version 4. OMRON Corporation
developed an internationalized version
that could display Chinese, Korean and Japanese characters in one page. OMRON's Arena supports both ISO-2022
and Unicode
. It is able to guess the charset
parameter automatically if charset parameter isn't specified in Content-Type field.
. CSS 1 support was enhanced and the internationalized version was also updated. Between the two beta-3 releases the W3C was already looking at a new testbed and switched later to the Amaya
browser. Beta-3 was the last involvement of the W3C in the development of Arena. On 17 February 1997, Yggdrasil Computing took over the role of developing the browser.
browser licensed under the GNU General Public License
. Yggdrasil licensed an X Window emulator
from Pearl Software to port Arena to Windows, although these builds were never released. Yggdrasil didn't provide any official binaries
at this time, because they didn't wanted to expand the community with alpha-quality software. Although users would be able to run Arena by compiling
it from the published source code, volunteers created unofficial finished binaries. Yggdrasil had planned to implement browsing features that were already standard in competitive web browsers, which resulted in the new bookmarks feature in version 0.3.18 on April 7, 1997.
Development stopped in late 1998, with the final release being on November 25, 1998.Because the official page is no longer online, the older source code and precompiled builds of Yggdrasil's development are no longer available, although Debian
's repository
archive contains the three newest builds. The W3C did not consider demonstration projects to be high priority, and thus, the Arena browser was entirely shut down in favor of outside Linux-community development.
as Raggett considered the programming manuals for Motif
and other X Window libraries to be rather daunting.
The W3C pre-beta phase uses a system of numbers up to 0.99, which indicated that these builds were in alpha-quality and the browser could have new features.
The beta phase changed the version numbering to a system consisting of the word "Beta-" beta followed by a number. After the beta-phase, the final product would have the version 1.0.
After Yggdrasil overtook the development, the development status was changed from the W3C beta builds back to alpha, implying that the Arena browser wasn't yet ready for release. The beta-3e version numbering then became 0.3.5 in GNU
style Development remained in alpha stage until 0.3.62, and never again advanced to beta.
The biggest problems were that Arena couldn't handle forms, and that the PNG support was broken from version 0.3.07 on. Earlier Arena releases had full alpha-channel
support, but only with using Arena's own "sandy" background pattern. The animated GIFs extension - presented by Netscape
in March 1996 - didn't work properly.
Other problems included rendering problems with tables, and the lack of integration of so called extended HTML code, i.e. the
Earlier versions of Arena (until 0.3.26 (01.06.97)) didn't support the email MIME.
Testbed
A testbed is a platform for experimentation of large development projects. Testbeds allow for rigorous, transparent, and replicable testing of scientific theories, computational tools, and new technologies.The term is used across many disciplines to describe a development environment that is...
web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
and web authoring tool for Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
. Originally authored by Dave Raggett
Dave Raggett
Dave Raggett is a computer specialist who has played a major role in implementing the World Wide Web since 1992.He has been a W3C Fellow at the World Wide Web Consortium since 1995 and worked on many of the key web protocols, including HTTP, HTML, XHTML, MathML, XForms, and VoiceXML.Raggett wrote...
in 1993, the browser continued its development at CERN
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
and the World Wide Web Consortium
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
(W3C) and subsequently by Yggdrasil Computing. As a testbed browser, Arena was used in testing the implementation for HTML3, Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
(CSS), Portable Network Graphics (PNG), and libwww
Libwww
libwww is a highly-modular client-side web API for Unix and Windows, and is also the name of the reference implementation of this API....
. Arena was widely used and popular at the beginning of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
.
Arena, which predated Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...
and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
, featured a number of innovations which were later used in commercial products. It was the first browser to support background images, tables, text flow around images, and inline mathematical expressions.
The Arena browser served as the W3C's testbed browser from 1994 to 1996 when it was succeeded by the Amaya
Amaya (web browser)
Amaya is a free and open source WYSIWYG web authoring tool with browsing abilities, created by a structured editor project at the INRIA, a French national research institution, and later adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium . Amaya is used as a testbed for web standards and replaced the Arena...
project.
History
In 1993, Dave Raggett, then at Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
(HP) in Bristol, England
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
devoted his spare time to developing Arena on which he hoped to demonstrate new and future HTML specifications. Development of the browser was slow because Raggett was the lone developer and HP, which like many other computer corporations at the time, was unconvinced that the Internet would succeed and thus did not consider investing in web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
development. Raggett demonstrated the browser at the first World Wide Web Conference
World Wide Web Conference 1
The first World Wide Web Conference which was organized by Robert Cailliau was held at Geneva, Switzerland from May 25 to May 27 in 1994 and was hosted by CERN....
in Geneva, Switzerland
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
in 1994 and the 1994 ISOC
Internet Society
The Internet Society or ISOC is an international, nonprofit organization founded during 1992 to provide direction in Internet related standards, education, and policy...
conference in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
to show text flow around images, forms, and other aspects of HTML later termed as the HTML+ specification. Raggett subsequently partnered with CERN, to develop Arena further as a proof of concept
Proof of concept
A proof of concept or a proof of principle is a realization of a certain method or idea to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle, whose purpose is to verify that some concept or theory that has the potential of being used...
browser for this work. Using the Arena browser, Dave Raggett, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, Håkon Wium Lie
Håkon Wium Lie
Håkon Wium Lie is a web pioneer, a standards activist, and, , the Chief Technology Officer of Opera Software.He is best known for proposing the concept of Cascading Style Sheets while working with Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN in 1994. As an employee at W3C, he developed CSS into a...
and others demonstrated text flow around a figure with captions, resizable tables, image backgrounds, HTML math, and other features. At the Web World conference in Orlando
Orlando
Orlando is a major city in the U.S. state of Florida.Orlando may also refer to-Places:* in Florida** Orlando, a major city** Greater Orlando, the 27th-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
, in early 1995, Raggett demonstrated the different new features of Arena.
Since July 1994 Lie was integrating libwww and CSS and helping Raggett. In October 1995, Yves Lafon joined the team for a year to provide support for HTML form and style sheet
Style sheet
A Style sheet is a feature in desktop publishing programs that store and apply formatting to text. Style sheets are a form of separation of presentation and content: it creates a separate abstraction to keep the presentation isolated from the text data....
development.
Arena was originally released for Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
, and although there was talk of a Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
port
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
, neither came to fruition.
Despite its time of development, Arena is in certain areas a relatively modern browser; because it functioned as a testbed, it saw the implementation of new technologies long before they became mainstream, i.e. CSS. Arena implemented many elements of the HTML3 and HTML3.2 specification including math elements that were deprecated in HTML4, HTML tables, and experimental style sheets.
W3C pre-Beta
The development history and the source codeSource code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
of earlier software build
Software build
In the field of computer software, the term software build refers either to the process of converting source code files into standalone software artifact that can be run on a computer, or the result of doing so...
s are not well documented, because the developers didn't want to distribute the source code until they considered the browser to be stable. In version 0.95, support for inline JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
images was added. In version 0.96, support was added for the FTP
File Transfer Protocol
File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...
, NNTP
Network News Transfer Protocol
The Network News Transfer Protocol is an Internet application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles between news servers and for reading and posting articles by end user client applications...
, and Gopher protocols
Communications protocol
A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...
, as well as experimental support for CSS. In Arena 0.98 Dave Beckett added full PNG support.
W3C Beta-1
The W3C published 5 versions of the Arena beta-1 between 27 November 1995 and 8 February 1996 improving 16-bit16-bit
-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
support and reimplementing CSS (which was still a Working Draft).
The W3C and the INRIA, a French national research institution, gave additional funding to develop CSS. To better implement and write CSS, an experimental style sheet for Arena was developed. On 22 May 1996, the W3C announced that Amaya will replace Arena as their new testbed and that the W3C was looking for new maintainer because the W3C didn't have the resources for two testbeds.
W3C Beta-2
Beta-2 had two builds (beta-2a: 28 February 1996 and beta-2b: 21 March 1996) and introduced a new APIApplication programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
for communicating with other applications. Also, the internal component libwww was updated to version 4. OMRON Corporation
OMRON
is a Japanese electronics company based in Kyoto.Omron was established by Kazuma Tateishi in 1933 and incorporated in 1948. Omron's primary business is the manufacture and sale of automation components, equipment and systems, but it is generally known for medical equipment such as digital...
developed an internationalized version
Internationalization and localization
In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...
that could display Chinese, Korean and Japanese characters in one page. OMRON's Arena supports both ISO-2022
ISO/IEC 2022
ISO/IEC 2022 Information technology—Character code structure and extension techniques, is an ISO standard specifying...
and Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
. It is able to guess the charset
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
parameter automatically if charset parameter isn't specified in Content-Type field.
W3C Beta-3
Beta-3a released on 14 August 1996 and Beta-3b released on 16 September 1996 introduced support for the Linux operating systems on m68k and DEC AlphaDEC Alpha
Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...
. CSS 1 support was enhanced and the internationalized version was also updated. Between the two beta-3 releases the W3C was already looking at a new testbed and switched later to the Amaya
Amaya (web browser)
Amaya is a free and open source WYSIWYG web authoring tool with browsing abilities, created by a structured editor project at the INRIA, a French national research institution, and later adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium . Amaya is used as a testbed for web standards and replaced the Arena...
browser. Beta-3 was the last involvement of the W3C in the development of Arena. On 17 February 1997, Yggdrasil Computing took over the role of developing the browser.
Yggdrasil phase
On 17 February 1997, the W3C approved Yggdrasil to coordinate future development of Arena. Development was taken over by Yggdrasil, with the idea to turn Arena into an open source X WindowX Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
browser licensed under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. Yggdrasil licensed an X Window emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
from Pearl Software to port Arena to Windows, although these builds were never released. Yggdrasil didn't provide any official binaries
Binary file
A binary file is a computer file which may contain any type of data, encoded in binary form for computer storage and processing purposes; for example, computer document files containing formatted text...
at this time, because they didn't wanted to expand the community with alpha-quality software. Although users would be able to run Arena by compiling
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
it from the published source code, volunteers created unofficial finished binaries. Yggdrasil had planned to implement browsing features that were already standard in competitive web browsers, which resulted in the new bookmarks feature in version 0.3.18 on April 7, 1997.
Development stopped in late 1998, with the final release being on November 25, 1998.Because the official page is no longer online, the older source code and precompiled builds of Yggdrasil's development are no longer available, although Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
's repository
Software repository
A software repository is a storage location from which software packages may be retrieved and installed on a computer.- Discussion :Many software publishers and other organizations maintain servers on the Internet for this purpose, either free of charge or for a subscription fee...
archive contains the three newest builds. The W3C did not consider demonstration projects to be high priority, and thus, the Arena browser was entirely shut down in favor of outside Linux-community development.
Features
Arena supported the following features:- HTML3.0 - the HTML3.2 standard predecessor, which includes
<math>, tables, forms, etc. - CSS1
- style sheet editing. This very experimental style sheet editor was implemented using forms
- editing remote HTML pages
- MIMEMIMEMultipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support:* Text in character sets other than ASCII* Non-text attachments* Message bodies with multiple parts...
(reads your mailcap file and applies the rules) - direct access to WAISWide area information serverWide Area Information Servers or WAIS is a client–server text searching system that uses the ANSI Standard Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specifications for Library Applications" to search index databases on remote computers...
engines (optionally) - HTTPHypertext Transfer ProtocolThe Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
1.1 proposed by RFC 2068 (formerly called HTTP-NG) - HTML editing with external editor
- external client communication (API and HTML "mailto:" schemeMailtoThe mailto URI scheme, as registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority , defines the scheme for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol email addresses...
) - PNG, JPEG, GIF (but not animated GIFs)
- Bookmarks (since 0.3.18)
- full XPM (since 0.3.33) and full XBM (since 0.3.34)
- Java appletJava appletA Java applet is an applet delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. Java applets can run in a Web browser using a Java Virtual Machine , or in Sun's AppletViewer, a stand-alone tool for testing applets...
s (since 0.3.39) - HTML Table support
- HTML Math equations
- Link rendition
- FTP, NNTP, Gopher
Technical
Arena was built using the multi-threaded library of common code called the W3C Reference Library, now called libwww. Originally, the Arena browser was built on top of XlibXlib
Xlib is an X Window System protocol client library written in the C programming language. It contains functions for interacting with an X server. These functions allow programmers to write programs without knowing the details of the protocol...
as Raggett considered the programming manuals for Motif
Motif (widget toolkit)
In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a...
and other X Window libraries to be rather daunting.
Version numbering
Arena has three different systems for the version numbering.The W3C pre-beta phase uses a system of numbers up to 0.99, which indicated that these builds were in alpha-quality and the browser could have new features.
The beta phase changed the version numbering to a system consisting of the word "Beta-" beta followed by a number. After the beta-phase, the final product would have the version 1.0.
After Yggdrasil overtook the development, the development status was changed from the W3C beta builds back to alpha, implying that the Arena browser wasn't yet ready for release. The beta-3e version numbering then became 0.3.5 in GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
style Development remained in alpha stage until 0.3.62, and never again advanced to beta.
Criticism
Although Arena ran well, there were inconsistent reports about the speed of Arena.The biggest problems were that Arena couldn't handle forms, and that the PNG support was broken from version 0.3.07 on. Earlier Arena releases had full alpha-channel
Alpha compositing
In computer graphics, alpha compositing is the process of combining an image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render image elements in separate passes, and then combine the resulting multiple 2D images into a single, final image in a...
support, but only with using Arena's own "sandy" background pattern. The animated GIFs extension - presented by Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
in March 1996 - didn't work properly.
Other problems included rendering problems with tables, and the lack of integration of so called extended HTML code, i.e. the
BG COLOR-tag and the DIV ALIGN-tag.Earlier versions of Arena (until 0.3.26 (01.06.97)) didn't support the email MIME.
Screenshots
External links
- A Quick Review of HTML 3.0
- Arena (web browser), Everything2Everything2Everything2, Everything2, or E2 for short is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter...
- style sheet documentation