There were even things like ViolaWWW [0][1], using a HyperCard-like approach, which exposed all its objects (even a canvas for drawing) and methods in its own s

There were even things like ViolaWWW [0][1], using a HyperCard-like approach, which exposed all its objects (even a canvas for drawing) and methods in its own scripting language. This was probably the nearest thing to the Web, we know today, but also an absolute security nightmare. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW [1] http://viola.org http://viola.org Edit: The basic building blocks of ViolaWWW were horizontal and vertical layout panes, which behaved much like flex elements and allowed the implementation of all the common HTML tags. These were accessible to viola-scripts and could also be generated by a script. Moreover, ViolaWWW also featured stylesheets (in a maybe more declarative form than CSS). Styles were also much like this, with multiple concurring standards. While MS IE featured CSS, Netscape used JavaScript styles. (However, Netscape soon adopted CSS syntax, but this remained a mere bridge to the original JS styles for all of the NS4.x life cycle.)