Dave Raggett first implemented a browser to render documents conforming to the HTML+ specifications which he worked on. HTML+ is now known as HTML3, and Arena's primary purpose is still to be a testbed for HTML3 documents. From July 94, Håkon W Lie of CERN worked with Dave to extend Arena in several directions. First, it was modified to take advantage of the library of common code, now known as the W3C Reference Library. Also, Arena was ported to all major unix platforms and made available on the net. Henrik Frystyk Nielsen was responsible for the library while at CERN and has continued this work for W3C at MIT. From release 0.96, Arena has included experimental support for Cascading Style Sheet.
From July 95, the W3C team at INRIA/Sophia Antipolis has been responsible for maintaining Arena. Yves Lafon has been extending support for forms, style sheets and graphics formats. We're also grateful to many external collaborators.
Binaries are available for linux, sun (solaris and sunos), dec and sgi.
The source code of Arena is available under the standard W3C copyright.
Arena has been an important testbed browser in the development of HTML and style sheets. Amaya is likely to take over as a testbed enviroment during 1996. We will not have the resrouces to maintain two testbed environments, and we are looking for groups that would be interested in taking over Arena.