Back when I first started using the Internet for anything other than email the latest thing was Gopher servers. These were a bit like the Web but without the snazzy display capabilities and were a more friendly way of serving files than FTP.
I’m surprised to find that there are still Gopher servers around. I’m even more surprised to find that some modern web browsers still support the Gopher protocol (Firefox, Netscape 7 and Internet Explorer 5 among them).
There’s a list of servers here running on an http proxy. There’s a genuine Gopher server here if your browser supports the protocol with a web version here if your browser doesn’t support Gopher.
As this article at Wired points out Gopher could enjoy something of a comeback as it’s ideal for presenting information for handheld computers which have problems with web sites.
Nothing ever really dies does it?
Posted 13 April 2004, 04:20 BST
