AppWare was a rapid application development system for Microsoft Windows and the classic Mac OS based on a simple graphical programming language.
The resulting logic could be compiled on either platform and typically only required minor changes to the GUI layout to complete the port.
[5] A review of Serius89 1.2 by MacWEEK concluded that it was "a novel, fascinating approach to 'desktop programming' and, despite its shortcomings, we believe it's an investment that will pay dividends in the future.
This release also included a suite of multimedia objects that allowed for the creation of interactive kiosk apps and similar.
In June 1993, during Ray Noorda's period of intense empire building, Novell purchased Serius outright.
[3] The company also purchased Software Transformations Inc., who made a cross-platform object code library that could be used to port conventional programs to a number of platforms, including the Mac, Windows, SunOS, UnixWare, HP-UX, with plans to add many more.
By early 1994, Novell's support for AppWare Foundation was waning, and in September 1994 they announced they would be selling the product to a third party.
[11] Ed Firmage said that the new firm had plans to enhance and expand the capabilities of AppWare on several different platforms and in combination with several object and document technologies.
Then in July 1996, Network Multimedia renamed AppWare as MicroBrew and relaunched it as a visual development tool for Internet applications.
[16] At a high level the system is similar in concept to HyperCard or Visual Basic, in that the program's logic is strongly associated with the object that sends some initial event.
AppWare applications consisted of a fixed number of forms and windows, a side effect of its lack of a NEW-type operator for creating new objects at runtime.