[indymike]

> only if you cherry-pick the ones that you like.

As did you. Every item you've cherry-picked used a multimedia app paradigm (similar to a CD ROM of the era) or was a novelty (Winamp). If you look a best-selling titles of the era, you'll find a lot of buy-in to both Mac and Windows HIG. Back then people bought word processors, spreadsheets, and other software and had a pretty high expectation for interop and usability compared to now.

> Did Microsoft Word run entirely in a web browser like it does today?

Of course not! Developers were still figuring out what you could do with primitive browsers and limited servers. Most developers from the 90s were unaware of the web until 97-98.