No one knew what to do with their computers back then (again, people barely knew what the internet was and AOL was trying to get people to use keywords because no one understood URLs), and software vendors wanted their stuff on new PCs, so any new PC would come with loads of third-party software. I know what you're thinking: What about bloatware? The 90s were huge for bloatware. Bundling a web browser with Windows 98 meant people were going to use it, because the alternative was going to a store and buying Netscape, which means having to take action and pay money. But the point is, obtaining software took time and work.

Sure, you could download software from some sites and it would take forever.

I try to paint that picture because it's a completely different landscape.

Forget about trying to stream video or downloading software. I still remember waiting for images to load. In 1998, no one was getting the gigabit speeds that we see now. After all, all of our software is downloaded. Today, it would be unimaginable for an operating system to ship without a web browser. Released in September 1997 for Windows, January 1998 for Mac, and March 1998 for Unix, Internet Explorer is when the so-called browser wars really started to heat up. Obviously, most of those don't exist anymore. IE3 came with Internet Mail and News, Windows Address Book, Microsoft Comic Chat, RealPlayer, NetMeeting, and Windows Media Player. This is also when Microsoft introduced JScript, its own version of JavaScript that was almost exactly the same language. Frames was a way to essentially render two webpages in one, so you would have one frame as a navigation bar and one frame for content, so when you clicked a link in navigation, only the content would have to load. Also there was support for ActiveX and frames, stuff that you really don't hear about anymore. One thing that was added in IE3 was support for CSS, or Cascading Stylesheets. While Internet Explorer 2 was the first version to be supported on Macs, this was the first one to be bundled with Macs, and that came with Mac OS 8.Īt this point, IE was still trying to catch up to Netscape, and it's where competition between the two started to heat up. It was also the first version of the browser that I used personally, although more specifically, that was Internet Explorer 3.02. Fast-forward to August 13, 1996, as that's when Internet Explorer 3 was released.

Microsoft internet explorer for mac