Gophers

Not to be confused with Google.

Wikipedia article with the browser forg.

Gopher is an Internet service consisting of accessing information through menus. The information is organized in the form of a tree: only the nodes contain access menus to other menus or to sheets, while the sheets simply contain textual information. In a way it is considered a predecessor of the Web, although links are only allowed from menu-nodes to other menu-nodes or to sheets, and sheets do not have any kind of hyperlinks.

Gopher is one of the Internet systems for disseminating information that preceded the world wide web. It was created in 1991 at the University of Minnesota and was the first system that allowed you to go from one site to another by selecting an option from a page menu. That is the reason why it became more popular than its competitors, which were eventually replaced by the Web.

Gopher servers, like FTP servers, store files and documents that can be viewed online or transferred to your PC.

Just as all of the world's Web sites make up the World Wide Web, Gopherspace encompasses the 5,000 or more Gopher servers in existence. Accessing a Gopher server is largely similar to using an FTP site, in that the information is presented in menus containing files and folders. Browse through the latter to find files, documents or other folders that have more levels of information. Normally the files are viewed or downloaded by clicking on them.

To look up information on gopher sites, you can use Veronica (back-acronym for Very Easy Rodent-O oriented Netwide Iindex to Computerized Archives), a search engine developed in 1992 by Steven Foster and Fred Barrie of the University of Nevada.

Although the remaining gopher servers are testimonial, the Firefox browser supported the protocol up to version 3. Internet Explorer removed it in 2002, after a vulnerability was discovered. Today, Firefox supports Gopher through the OverbiteFF extension. Lynx Browser natively supports Gopher.

In order to consult information stored in Gopher sites using current browsers, specific proxy sites can be used.