Windows 3.x Essential Software

This is the last version of the Netscape Communicator Suite available for Windows 3.x and it's my favorite browser even though it's not as compliant to standards as IE5. It works great for browsing The Old Net or using the Web Rendering Proxy. You can get it to kinda work with Browservice but the experience is horrible, you can find more information about it here.

Also make sure to browse this website in it! =)

This is the last version of the standalone Netscape Navigator available for Windows 3.x and it's my favorite browser even though it's not as compliant to standards as IE5. It works great for browsing The Old Net or using the Web Rendering Proxy. You can get it to kinda work with Browservice but the experience is horrible, you can find more information about it here.

Also make sure to browse this website in it! =)

One of the last versions of the Netscape Communicator Suite available for Windows 3.x and it's my favorite browser even though it's not as compliant to standards as IE5. It works great for browsing The Old Net or using the Web Rendering Proxy. You can get it to kinda work with Browservice but the experience is horrible, you can find more information about it here.

Also make sure to browse this website in it! =)

The latest version of Internet Explorer for Windows 3.x and it's probably the best browser available for the system. It works great for browsing The Old Net or using the Web Rendering Proxy but you can also use Browservice with it even though performance won't be great.

You can find more information about it here.

A slightly older and lighter version of IE for Windows 3.x. It also works great for browsing The Old Net or using the Web Rendering Proxy and, as before, you can also use Browservice with it even though performance won't be great.

You can find more information about it here.

This is Netscape 3 Gold and it works great for browsing The Old Net or using the Web Rendering Proxy.

This is Opera 3.62 and it's another alternative for retro-browsing on Windows 3.1. It works great for browsing The Old Net or using the Web Rendering Proxy.

Just keep in mind that, at the time, Opera was a paid piece of software and this is a trial version that needs a key to activate it.

Here's a possible activation key, I haven't tested it:

Name: OPERA Company

Serial: LxCGg76EPoG7a833a672b4

Maybe not the most essential piece of sotware in the world since not a lot of people use IRC anymore, but you can still connect to IRC servers with it and there are some very useful computing channels with people ready to help.

This is an update for the Internet Explorer 5 that adds support for 128-bit encryption for SSL certificates.

Allows playring SWF files from early versions of Flash on Netscape.

This is necessary to add TCP/IP support for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (only supported by this version). You can't access modern networks without it.

This is my FTP client of choice for Windows 3.x, I have an NAS with all of my old software and I use WS_FTP all the time to transfer stuff to my Windows 3.x machine.

This is the latest version of Acrobat Reader, the PDF Reader, for Windows 3.x.

This is the last version of Windows Media Player available for Windows 3.x. It can play network streams and it does have a modern feel. I have found that it's not the most stable piece of software in the world though.

Quicktime needs no introduction, and this is the last version to be available for Windows 3.x.

This is an MPEG2 Player, encoder and decoder. It requres Win32s to run as it's a 32-bit piece of software.

This allows you to play AVI files on Windows 3.x.

Oh how I wish I could run Winamp on Windows 3.x, but sadly we can't. This is the next best thing though and I have listened to a lot of music with it in the past. It's a great mp3 player, probably because it was the first realtime mp3 player for Windows.

It's a great MPEG and VCD Player for Windows 3.x.

One of the first players that allowed video streaming over the internet in a standalone player but also over a Netscape plugin.

Real Player does not need introduction, this is the 4.01 version of the player that allowed playing videos, audio and stream from the internet in the Real format.

This is the somewhat rare 5.0 version of the Real Player for Windows 3.x. This supports more codec types and is supposedly faster.

Another early player that supported video streaming over its own player and via the Netscape Browser.

Calmira is an awesome piece of software that allows you to customize Windows 3.x to look like Windows 95. You can checkout the website for more info.

Calpaint is a very useful tool that helps you customize the look of Calmira, it's basically the equivalent to Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95. You can check out the website for more info.

Winzip needs no introduction. This is an essential install for Windows 3.x and it will allow you to extract the downloads on this page. Ironically though this file is zipped, so make sure to unzip it at another computer first.

This is an extension for Windows 3.x that allows you to run some 32-bit programs. Some programs needed it to run but you can also run some Windows 95 ones like Adobe Photoshop 4.