The ritual was always the same. You’d double-click the blue ‘e’ for Internet Explorer 6, wait for the dial-up modem to finish its screeching handshake, and head to , Miniclip , or Homestar Runner .
Sometimes, the plugin would hang. The cursor would turn into an hourglass, and you’d have to perform the Windows XP "Three-Finger Salute" (Ctrl+Alt+Del) to kill the iexplore.exe process. There was a specific heartbreak in having a high score in Bloons or Fancy Pants Adventure only to have the "Shockwave Flash has crashed" dialog box shatter the illusion. The Long Sunset Shockwave Flash Windows Xp
For a generation of kids and office workers, the internet wasn't yet a series of streamlined apps; it was a chaotic, blinking playground powered by a single, miraculous plugin: . The Portal in the Browser The ritual was always the same