I always thought NeWS was way ahead of its time. The modern web application stack looks a lot like what Gosling did in the 90s, but with PostScript replaced by JavaScript+HTML.
The closest thing would be something that does almost everything in JavaScript and would abstract the HTML/CSS underpinnings away, but that's certainly not the current approach to "proper" web design (ExtJS would come to mind).
Honestly, I'd be hard-pressed to find any prior system with that many layers (VBScript?)...