Win2K was peak windows for me. Every subsequent version has gotten worse from my POV.
Main difference was easier-to-install video card drivers, though you could often get them to work on W2k by editing INI files.
Even WinXP had goofy web technology tied into File Explorer (called “Windows Explorer” then, I believe). Win2K was just optimal, for me, for what I was doing at the time.
If you changed the colour scheme on Windows 98, none of the cloud images were transparent in Explorer (they assumed the background was white) so you'd end up with these weird clouds/sky fading into a white background and then a hard line into whatever colour you'd set your background to.
The desktop was very sluggish if you added an active desktop to it, as IE4 had to run; at least it was on my underpowered machine. Additionally it came with a screensaver that you could interact with, which was odd because normally moving the mouse dismissed the screensaver.
But the post parent to yours was correct about HTML being in Win2k: https://imgur.com/ncvvBY0
That infopanel on the left is HTML.