Microsoft Windows was announced by Bill Gates on November 10, 1983. Microsoft introduced Windows as a graphical user interface for MS-DOS , which had been introduced a couple of years earlier. In the 1990s, the product line evolved from an operating environment into a fully complete, modern operating system over two lines of development, each with their own separate codebase. The first versions of Windows (1.0 through to 3.11) were graphical shells that run from MS-DOS; later on, Windows 95 , though still being based on MS-DOS, was its own operating system, using a 16-bit DOS-based kernel and a 32-bit user space . Windows 95 introduced many features that have been part of the product ever since, including the Start menu , the taskbar , and Windows Explorer (renamed File Explorer in Windows 8). In 1997, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 4 wh...