Internet Explorer 3 dropped in August 1996, and it was the first version of IE that actually felt like it could compete in the browser wars. It brought support for CSS, Java applets, GIFs with transparency, and even basic multimedia with plugins like RealPlayer and QuickTime. Microsoft pushed out version 3.01 just a few months later to patch security issues, and 3.02 and 3.03 followed in 1997 to tighten things up before IE4 took over. For a lot of people, this was their first real taste of the web—dial‑up tones, Geocities pages, and the little blue “e” that became a default part of Windows 95 and NT. It wasn’t perfect, but for its time, IE3 made the internet feel like the future.