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Gopher is the ancestor of HTTP. It was developed at the University |
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of Minnesota in 1991 back when the World Wide Web was barely |
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beginning to gain momentum, but was ultimately overwhelmed by HTTP. |
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Gopher content is organized as a simple directory tree. Each |
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directory can contain files of any kind and, optionally, a special |
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gophermap file which is used to add custom messages or items. |
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This structure makes it extremely easy and consistent to navigate, |
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and because it's plaintext only, the services and content hosted on |
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it do not rely on any graphical features, which makes it very |
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lightweight to browse even on low-end machines. |
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The plain text-ness also makes it nice and compact to read, unlike |
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HTML layouts which are entirely up to the web designers. |
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Because of these strengths, many enthusiasts such as me still use |
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it, and even prefer it to the modern web. I personally think |
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browsers should not be an entire OS, and anything more complicated |
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than a static plain text page should be a dedicated app instead of |
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a web app. |
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.. |
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0_README_how_to_browse 2016-Nov-11 17:49 -------- |
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escaping_special_chars 2016-Nov-10 22:55 -------- |
