Windows 98 changes very little from Windows 95. Titlebars have gradients to them, items in menu bars now will gain 3D button-like borders when you mouse over them. The main change in 98 however, is the god awful new shell.

The Windows 98 splash now has an updated look to it.

On first access, we have a welcome screen thing that plays some cheesy but catchy music in the background. What you can also see is that hideous black window-like thing on the desktop.
This is part of the new "Active Desktop", which basically allows ActiveX controls to run on your desktop (and download malware while you're not looking). That bar is supposed to display advertisements for various things, but for whatever reason it isn't. Oh well, it's not like those should be there anyways.

Uh, please do not. I don't ever want to see that **** again.

The desktop hasn't changed much from 95, however we can see an icon for Microsoft's Internet Exploder, as well as for some of their other online crap.

The start menu now opens with some animated scrolling effects, but other than that it remains unchanged.