ebj73

I was first online during the summer of 1993. I remember using a browser called Cello, which was developed at Cornell Law School. I suppose it's name must somehow be inspired by the name of the Viola browser that you mention. I did not know about Viola at the time.

I also remember using a shareware winsock implementation to get online, Trumpet Winsock.

I was thinking the same, but I think it's mainly for prototyping. You have a design that will eventually end up inside a window frame, and you want to show how it might look, before it's actually implemented. I hope that's the purpose.

I first thought that the idea was to lend "fake credibility" to an image, by making it seem like the output from an application.

But I guess the main idea must be prototyping, and to show off how a particular design might look in the end, once implemented as part of an application.