The one area where I think 98 and 2000 regress from 95 is that they introduce "web content" in applications that are not web browsers - specifically, random objects respond to single-clicks instead of double-clicks, and blue underlined (and sometimes not even underlined) hyperlinks start to appear.

There was no reason to do that.

Active X desktop crap could be disabled with some Registry tweaks.

It wasn't just on the desktop, though. It was in the Explorer, in Office apps, and various other places.