ViolaWWW browser

This page was last updated at: May 5, 2026

ViolaWWW was a vintage Desktop web browser that ran on Unix-like operating systems. It was developed by Pei-Yuan Wei. It was developed for about 3 years before being discontinued. ViolaWWW's website doesn't work any more, but there is a saved copy of it on archive.org.

Viola was the first popular graphical web browser.

About ViolaWWW

Browser URL web.archive.org/web/19991013000059/viola.org
Browser made by Pei-Yuan Wei
Development Status Discontinued
The developers have announced that the browser won't be developed any more
Launched 1992
Discontinued 1995
Operating System Unix-like
Device platform Desktop
Rendering Engine Custom
I have seen it referred to as "ViolaWWW engine" but doubt that's an official name.
Wikipedia Article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW
General Info Viola on the Web Design Museum
URL Code Repo A new port of ViolaWWW to modern macOS
Incredible work: a very small group of developers has ported the original code for ViolaWWW to modern macOS; preserving the look and feel yet making it possible to browse the modern internet (mostly) using this ancient browser. Very cool.
W3.org: ViolaWWW

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