Lance Gill, a UC Berkeley student, had just completed a hiking trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park with his girlfriend. He returned to Berkeley on the last day of March. When passing a building near the school, he saw a new billboard erected on the top floor.

The content of the billboard is very simple. On the left is a black camera, and on the right is a logo surrounded by red, yellow and green colors in blue circles. The shape is a bit like a microcosm of the lens. The advertising slogan is written on the bottom: The camera allows humans to appreciate the dynamics of the real world, and iView allows humans to appreciate the dynamics of the Internet world!

My girlfriend also noticed the new billboard and asked in confusion: "What product is that?"

Lance Gill studied computer science and understood it at a glance, saying, "It should be a new browser."

“What is the browser?”

"A kind of network software, like a camera... or a camera, allows you to see content on the Internet."

Lance Gill first sent his girlfriend home, and then returned to his dormitory. As soon as he entered the door, he saw his roommate sitting in front of the computer typing, with a pile of pizza takeaway boxes and a dozen drinking cans on the ground. He seemed to have not gone out for several days, so he asked loudly: "Hey! Harry, I said not to leave the garbage in the room."

"I'm porting the iView browser, and I'll throw it away when I'm finished."

Lance Gill thought of the billboard he had just seen, put down his backpack, walked over and looked at it, and saw that in front of Harry, there was a laptop in addition to the desktop computer he was programming, with dense program codes displayed on the screen.

"Harry, where did you get the source code? It's illegal to port software without permission."

"iView is an open source software that can be used, modified and transplanted at will." Harry seemed to have not been sleeping for a long time, but he was very excited. He typed his words and explained: "Nick and George are betting with me to see who will first port iView to FreeBSD. They will lose because I will be finished soon... Ahha! Another function has been completed, and Nick's NBA star card will be mine."

"Why do you want to port this iView? Isn't there Netscape?"

"Lance, you went to Great Smoky Mountains for a week and have become a primitive person. Netscape is garbage, and iView is the best browser in the world. I can prove this with a simple example."

Harry stopped typing, moved his laptop to the right side of the desk, turned off the source code above, opened a browser program, entered the URL "www.iview.com" in the address bar, but did not rush to press Enter, but raised his index finger and shook it at Lance, reminding him: "Note, you will see a beautiful, magical and great new world!"

After pressing the Enter button with the index finger, a group of black small fish appeared in the middle of the screen of the laptop. The small fish were like dandelions blown away by the wind, dispersing in an orderly and beautiful way, swimming around freely.

On his 18th birthday, Lance went to Las Vegas alone to watch a strip-dressing show. At that time, he felt that there was no more exciting scene in the world than this. However, now he was shocked by the dynamic effect on the computer. He felt a completely different but more novel stimulation. He was surprised and excited and shouted: "FXXK! What is this?"

"This is a miracle created by iScript." Harry clicked the mouse, the little fish on the page dispersed, the official homepage of iView appeared, and then read the slogan above: "Use iView to experience the living Internet."

The homepage looks simple at first glance, with only three columns: iView browser, iScript language, and interactive communication. However, when the mouse slides through the column name, a menu will automatically pop up, showing different sub-columns. This dynamic effect is a basic function that every website must have in 2016, but in 1995 it was a shocking innovation. Lance looked at the demonstration for a while and said: "Harry, you are right. iView is the best browser in the world. It will usher in a new era."

"Yes, and it's still open source." Harry turned off his browser and put his laptop back to his original position, saying, "Lance, do you remember the 7-ZIP we transplanted together last time? iView is the new work of the author. He is now in the United States and will hold a speech on open source software at our school tonight. You can go and listen to it with me."

"OK, I'll go."

While Lance and Harry were discussing the iView browser, Allen Butler was frustrated with iScript.

Allen Butler opened an Internet design company in San Jose, which specializes in helping small and medium-sized enterprises build websites or homepages. Like making blackboard newspapers, using HTML language as glue, and pasting a bunch of text and photos online. The work is simple and profitable, so life is quite comfortable. However, starting from March 28, his good days ended because the company received calls from several customers, requiring that in addition to photos and text on the page, there should be animation effects.

Damn it!

I run a web design company, not a Disney film company!

Allen Butler racked his brains and used all kinds of thoughtful words to popularize the principles of web design to customers, but no customer could continue to listen. He said in a word that his company's page must be like a little fish on the iView homepage, and can display the company's image in a moving form.

What is iView?

What is a little fish?

Allen Butler opened the iView homepage with confusion and confusion, but he didn't see any fish, only saw a simple and ordinary website, and even had an analysis error message at the corner. He closed the page with disdain and left the customer's request behind.

However, in the next few days, more and more customers called over and asked inexplicable requests such as "to live", "move", and "can dance". Allen Butler was upset and had to open the official website of iView again and browse the content above carefully. Only then did he realize that iView is a new browser. Only after installing it can you see dynamic effects. The Netscape I used before could not render dynamic effects because it did not have an iScript engine.

What is the iScript engine?

After downloading, installing, and getting everything done, Allen Butler opened the iView website again. This time he was shocked like Reims. He stared at the little fish swimming around the screen for several minutes, then shouted with his half-bad head, entered the homepage as fast as possible, clicked the submenu of the iScript column, downloaded the instructions and programming guide.

Quick, learn it as fast as possible!

You can only earn $1,000 when you make a static web page, and you can earn at least $5,000 when you make a dynamic web page!

While Allen Butler was studying the iScript language, Bert Persia, far away in Europe, was reading an email.

The email was sent by a netizen with the ID called UN2758. This ID Bert Persian once saw many people talking about it in the Linux news group, but it is related to open source software and has little to do with the Internet. He is currently writing a brand new web browser, so he doesn't pay much attention to it.

The email was very long and there were attachments. Bert Persian first soaked a cup of coffee, then sat down and looked slowly. After a while, he sat up straight and even forgot to drink the coffee because UN2758 was discussing with him the technical standards for CSS.

In 1993, Bert Persia wrote a paper on software graphical user interface. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Groningen and then began to design a browser called Argo. In 1994, he and a friend named Hakun-Li designed a new technology to improve the design and display effects of web pages. The two called this new technology a cascading style sheet, referred to as CSS.

However, this new technology is still just a simple draft, with many flaws and problems, and is far from mature. Therefore, Bert Persia only showed it once in a technical forum in Chicago. Where did you know about UN2758?

UN2758 described his understanding of Internet front-end design and CSS technology in detail in the email, and put forward a lot of pertinent and forward-looking suggestions. When Bert Persian saw only half of it, he felt that the CSS designed by himself and Hakun-Li was like a building block for babies to play with. It was not worth mentioning and could not be used. The CSS foreseen by UN2758 is like the Empire State Building in New York, which is strong, beautiful and durable.

Bert Persia took a sip of the cold coffee and opened the downloaded attachment. The attachment contained a browser called iView. After installing it for about half an hour, he felt that his Argo browser that was about to be completed could be thrown into the trash can.

Maybe I should accept the invitation to work at this iView company...

But I like life in Europe, not America...

When Bert Persia was hesitating for work, Chen Zhiyang was sitting in the office talking with Zeng Fanhao with great enthusiasm.

"Director Zeng, how have you studied the source code of iView?"

"About 70% of the research has been studied. Xiao Zhou said that a beta version of Chinese browser can be created in at most two weeks."

"No, not bad, you can make Xiao Zhou work harder and must make our own browser before other domestic colleges and universities."

"Don't worry, Principal Chen, with Dayou's help, we got the source code three days ahead of others, and immediately started researching it. It is impossible for anyone in China to make a quicker time than us." Zeng Fanhao first patted his chest and issued a military order, and then said with some concern: "Principal Chen, iView is unknown now, and few people know that it is not a big problem to borrow it directly. If it becomes popular in the future, will people gossip us if we do this?"

Chen Zhiyang smiled and said with a smile: "What you lack now is products that can fill the gap in China, not technology. We don't use the open source system. You can change the interface and change Zhao Feiyan to Yang Yuhuan, and who can recognize it?"

"Haha, so is Principal Chen said."

"You ask Xiao Zhou to be faster, the faster the better. After gaining popularity, I can help you apply for more scientific research funds. In this way, when the School of Computer Science is officially opened next semester, you have heavyweight product lineups and scientific research funds to win people's hearts, so that you can firmly sit in the position of dean, so that you will not be said to have low qualifications and lack prestige."
Chapter completed!