Internet Explorer (1995) 109 Web Browser Windows MacOS Unix Mac OS X

Microsoft Internet Explorer is a web browser application created by Microsoft primarily for Microsoft Windows. It was initially based on Spyglass Mosaic. At various points, Internet Explorer was also available for MacOS, Solaris, and HP-UX.

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Microsoft Plus! (1995) 69 Utility Novelty Windows

Microsoft Plus! was an add-on package to Windows that added desktop themes, screen savers, sound effects, power-toys, and other assorted goodies for the home user. Plus! 95 also included Internet Explorer 1.0, which was not included in all Windows 95 distributions.

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Netscape (1994) 60 Web Browser Windows Unix MacOS OS2 Linux Other Mac OS X

Netscape Navigator/Communicator was the first commercial web browser, displacing the free NCSA Mosaic. 1.0 was first released in December 1994, and initially offered advanced features such as progressively rendering pages as they loaded. It quickly gained many other features and capabilities and became the most popular web browser in the mid 1990s. One reason for its popularity, it was licensed freely for personal and non-profit use, although companies were expected to pay for a license. It later competed with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari, and eventually was open sourced in to the Mozilla browser.

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After Dark (1989) 33 Novelty Windows

After Dark, from Berkeley Systems, Inc, is a set of entertaining screen savers for Mac and Windows. After Dark for Windows started off as "Magic Screen Saver" for Windows 2.x. After Dark was most famous for its "Flying Toasters" screen saver. Afterdark was very popular on both the early Macintosh computers and Windows 3.0, as neither included any kind of screen saver or screen blanker that would help prevent screen burn-in.

• Magic ScreenSaver
• 1.0 for Windows
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Encarta (1993) 25 Reference Windows MacOS

Microsoft Encarta was a home oriented interactive encyclopedia that was often sold with new OEM machines. Unlike a paper encyclopedia, Encarta took full advantage of being on a computer, with updates from the Internet, sound clips and movies, interactive charts and games, and good navigation.

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Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 10 Graphics Publishing Novelty Windows

Instant Artist, later renamed to Print Artist, is a greeting card and sign creation program that uses vectorized graphics. It was created by The Pixellite Group, the original authors of The Print Shop, and published in 1992 by Autodesk. It was later sold by Sierra On-line. It features a high quality set of generic reusable clip art. The clip art uses vector based technology that was also used in BannerMania.

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NCSA Mosaic (1993) 9 Web Browser Windows

First released in 1993, NCSA Mosaic was the first really popular web browser. Unlike the original browser, WorldWideWeb on NeXT, Mosaic was available for the Microsoft Windows platform and added features such as inline graphics viewing. It was developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. NCSA Mosaic was distributed freely for non commercial use, but required a license for commercial business use. It was licensed by a number of third party OEMs, including Microsoft, who used it for the basis of Microsoft Internet Explorer. In 1995, its popularly quickly gave way to Netscape Navigator.

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Microsoft BOB (1995) 6 Novelty Windows

Microsoft BOB is a Windows 3.1 graphical shell intended for novice users. It presents your desktop as a series of "rooms" with various selectable objects, and assists you with a friendly animated guide. It features vector based graphics that scale to any size or resolution screen, supports user profiles, and includes rudimentary editor, calendar, address book, and checking programs. It was created as a response to Packard Bell Navigator and is somewhat comparable to Apple At Ease and 3DNA.

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ViaVoice (1997) 6 Utility Novelty Windows

ViaVoice is a voice recognition program from IBM. It was available in a number of different languages. It was based on the previous VoiceType product Helloooo computer!

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Firefox (2005) 5 Web Browser Windows Linux Mac OS X

Firefox is a web browser based on the open source Mozilla web browser. It was intended to be lighter weight and faster than Mozilla, separating the e-mail client in to the new Thunderbird product. At release, it implemented better support for web standards than Microsoft Internet Explorer. Firefox included features such as tabbed browsing and support for add-ons.

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Bookshelf (1987) 4 Reference Windows

Microsoft Bookshelf is a CD-ROM based multimedia reference tool from Microsoft, including a dictionary, thesaurus, quotations, atlas, and other types of references. Some versions were included and integrated with Microsoft Office, albeit sometimes stripped down.

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Microsoft Scenes (1993) 4 Novelty Windows

Microsoft Scenes is a screen saver that displays a slide show of photographs. It was packaged in several varieties with different themed galleries.

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Microsoft Creative Writer (1994) 4 Word Processor Novelty Windows MacOS

Microsoft Creative Writer is a dumbed down Microsoft BOB-like word processor and sign maker targeted at children. It was sold alongside, and later bundled with, a drawing program called Microsoft Fine Artist

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BodyWorks (1991) 3 Reference DOS Windows

BodyWorks, from Software Marketing Corp, is an interactive computerized human anatomy reference for DOS and Windows. It is an informal educational/multimedia product targeted at home users.

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• Classic

Microsoft Cinemania (1994) 3 Reference Windows MacOS

Microsoft Cinemania is a reference application that was released by Microsoft that was a database of films that contained still images, sound clips, dialogues, sound tracks and some full motion video clips. The software was released annually until 1997, with the last version being Cinemania 97. Think of this as an early IMDB, but without the internet part.

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Mozilla (2002) 3 Web Browser Windows Linux Mac OS X

Mozilla is an open source web browser based on a rewrite of the Netscape web browser. Netscape Communications Corporation released the source code in 1998 with the intent that it would be used as the core of next Netscape browser. Shortly after the release, Netscape Communications Corporation was acquired by AOL. Mozilla was used for the basis of Netscape 6.x and 7.x. Mozilla (later codenamed SeaMonkey) was eventually reworked and became Firefox.

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Calendar Creator Plus (1990) 2 Novelty PIM Windows

Calendar Creator Plus from Vermont Creative Software/Power Up, and later Spinnaker Software, is a tool for creating printed calendars with different styles and custom lists of events.

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Microsoft Complete Basketball (1994) 2 Reference Novelty Windows

Multimedia software from the Microsoft Home series providing reference material on players, teams, and history of the NBA league. Runs on Windows 3.1 or later.

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Microsoft Dangerous Creatures (1994) 2 Reference Novelty Windows

Multimedia title from the Microsoft Home series about venomous and dangerous animals, such as spiders, snakes, fish, etc. from around the world. Runs on Windows 3.1 or later.

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American Heritage Electronic Dictionary (1991) 2 Reference Windows

Houghton Mifflin American Heritage Electronic Dictionary is a resident background program that gives you instant searchable access to an entire dictionary.

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Microsoft Fine Artist (1994) 2 Graphics Novelty Windows MacOS

Microsoft Fine Artist is a dumbed down Microsoft Bob-like drawing program targeted at children. It was sold alongside, and later bundled with, a word processor called Microsoft Creative Writer.

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Microsoft SoundBits (1992) 2 Novelty Windows

Microsoft SoundBits is a Windows 3.1 program that adds a variety of annoying sounds to actions such as opening a program, or minimizing a window. Because multimedia! It comes in three different flavors: Hanna-Barbera, Hollywood Movies, and Musical Sounds.

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Icon Do-It (1992) 2 Utility Novelty Windows

Icon-Do-It, from Moon Valley Software, is a utility that enables you to customize your program group icons, and add animated icons to normal program items. It also includes a screen saver module. It is designed to work with both Windows 3.0 and 3.1.

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Microsoft Musical Instruments (1994) 2 Reference Novelty Windows

Microsoft Musical Instruments is a multimedia CD ROM encyclopedia of musical instruments from around the world. Part of the Microsoft Home family of multimedia products.

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America Online (1992) 1 Web Browser Chat DOS Windows

America Online was a proprietary dial-up online service that eventually grew to offerer Internet access. In the mid 1990s AOL was very heavily promoted. Every month or two, you were sure to get a free AOL floppy disk or CD-ROM in the mail. AOL originated as PC-Link.

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