[ineedtosleep]

I remember that as well. I thought that _was_ the internet since that was my first real exposure to home internet. Outside of that it was just my elementary school and the library. When services like NetZero and Juno came out, my mind was blown knowing that I didn't need to have the entire AOL ecosystem load up -- which could take a while with a 14.4k modem and a 133MHz(?) Pentium with 32MB RAM.

[pests]

I rememebr this era too.

I once showed this off to a friend by minimizing the AOL window, opening a folder, and typing some domain into the location bar. Back then IE was intermingled with explorer enough that this opened the website inside the folder window! Thus proving the internet existed outside of AOL!

We also had similar discoveries of editing the HTML of the folder itself before discovering .html files for making websites.

Then again when we discovered how to make content go into horizontal columns with this magic called <table> and <td> ! The magic!

[treesknees]

I recall using this method to bypass the strict filtering of my child-level AOL account. I could browse chat rooms and play games on websites I couldn’t access in the AOL browser via IE. Good times!

[aeno]

Are you me? This was my exact experience back in the early 2000s when AOL expanded to Germany.

[kylebenzle]

I was the exact same. My mind was blown when I realized you could connect to AOL and THEN open an internet browser and just be ONLINE! I spent way to long thinking AOL was the internet before I think I saw my cousin do this and it changed my world forever.