HotJava Views was a productivity software suite

Software suite

A software suite or application suite is a collection of computer programs, usually application software and programming software of related functionality, often sharing a more-or-less common user interface and some ability to smoothly exchange data with each other.Sometimes software makers...

 developed by Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

 and implemented in Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

. It was released in 1996 and was intended primarily for JavaStation

JavaStation

The JavaStation was a Network Computer developed by Sun Microsystems between 1996 and 2000, intended to run only Java applications.The hardware is based on the design of the Sun SPARCstation series, a very successful line of UNIX workstations....

 or other JavaOS

JavaOS

JavaOS is an operating system with a Java virtual machine as a fundamental component. It was jointly developed by Sun Microsystems and IBM. Unlike Windows, Mac OS, Unix or Unix-like systems which are primarily written in the C programming language, JavaOS is primarily written in Java.As of 2006,...

-based network computer

Network computer

Network Computer is a trademark of Oracle Corporation that was used, from approximately 1996 to 2000, to market a range of diskless desktop computer devices. The devices were designed and manufactured by an alliance, which included Sun Microsystems, IBM, and others...

s.

HotJava Views consisted of four applications:

MailView: IMAP4 e-mail client

E-mail client

An email client, email reader, or more formally mail user agent , is a computer program used to manage a user's email.The term can refer to any system capable of accessing the user's email mailbox, regardless of it being a mail user agent, a relaying server, or a human typing on a terminal...

CalendarView: Group scheduling
WebView: HotJava

HotJava

HotJava was a modular, extensible web browser from Sun Microsystems implemented in Java. It was the first browser to support Java applets, and was Sun's demonstration platform for the then new technology. It has since been discontinued and is now no longer supported...

 web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

NameView: Directory services

The graphical user interface

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

 of HotJava Views was quite novel in that it dispensed with some of the common features of GUIs in order to simplify the interface. Menu bar

Menu bar

A menu bar is a region of a screen or application interface where drop down menus are displayed. The menu bar's purpose is to supply a common housing for window- or application-specific menus which provide access to such functions as opening files, interacting with an application, or displaying...

s and overlapping, resizable windows were eliminated and a simple Selector icon bar was used to switch between applications. Other third-party Java applications could be added to the Selector.