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Windows 98 was when they turned the whole file explorer into some kind of pseudo webview integrated with IE. This was also when they were terrified of Java web
by kalleboo 5y ago
Windows 98 was when they turned the whole file explorer into some kind of pseudo webview integrated with IE.
This was also when they were terrified of Java web applets making Windows as a platform obsolete so they were busy embrace and extending that (and pushing ActiveX in order to turn the web Windows proprietary).
So I think it very much sounds like the correct context.
- thrashh 5y agoWhen we were in high school we played around with IE5 web applications made with .hta files that were basically Electron apps 15 years before Electron. And we used to screw with replacing the HTML of folders on shared drives in middle school with secret games and other stuff (the actual folder listing was some ActiveX you dropped into the page), until some folder war broke out and the sysadmins banned it.
- mst 5y agoAh, yes, active desktop, crashy little bastard that it was. When I was doing desktop support for 9x I got very good at enumerating the things active desktop theoretically did, checking users weren't using any of them, and turning the flipping thing off. This was infinitely less painful for everybody than trying to coax it into actually working. (and before you say "but the users would just turn it back on again" ... yes, and then I'd turn it back off while explaining I'd warned them about that just loudly enough that the next time they turned it back on their colleagues would laugh at them before they got as far as contacting me and the problem then became self-solving)