Gopher protocol support

macadoum

Hello, I'm a big fan of gopher to navigate on the internet. Actually, it's very difficult to access gopher site with any modern browser. The most accurate way is to use the Overbite WX extension on Firefox but it's not a very good way to access the gopherspace, it's a very hacky. It's working as a proxy between gopher and http and it's far from an ideal working state.

According to some recent article the number of gopher site is slowly growing again after years of decrease. There is actually about 300 gopher servers in the world, including mine. Some people also meet for an annual GopherCon in Rodez, France this summer talking about the future of Gopher and how gopher can still bring something to to world.

Vivaldi aims to become a browser for everybody, whatever the needs of a people can be. I think it could be useful to some people to have a modern browser natively supporting their favorite protocol without the need of an extension. It can be as fun and useful as the support of the HUE lights back in 2016.

Would be nice if native gopher protocol happen in Vivaldi !

Typical view of a gopher site :

alt text

greybeard

Agreed, but if I asked around I might find three people who would know what I was talking about if I mentioned Gopher protocol in a conversation. (Mods and Devs excluded.)
I always used to have Lynx loaded to get to Gopher sites but not since all my old computers are dead except one.

I do not think it would a priority. I am not even sure the Chromium base supports Gopher. Will have to look into that.

[EDIT} There are a few Modern browsers that provide Gopher support. See this comparison.

macadoum

@greybeard said in Gopher protocol support:

[EDIT} There are a few Modern browsers that provide Gopher support. See this comparison.

I don't see any modern browser supporting gopher here unless you consider SeaMonkey as "modern". All others browsers are very outdated.

Chromium certainly don't have native gopher support. This feature is something where Vivaldi will need to innovate.

becm

@macadoum ~~innovate~~ excavate

Hadden89

@greybeard Gopher, won't fix. (Ok, the bug is old, but I think they still don't support it).
Untested extension for chromiums (similar to overbite)

greybeard

@macadoum SeaMonkey had an update only a few months back. Although not as pretty as the new FF or other browsers it is a fork on a stable FF ver. 49.0 (FF now at ver. 62 or something).
I sometimes need to use it as it still has features that FF has removed, though not as versatile.
We may have to agree to disagree on the use of the term "modern".

Off Topic: I recently downloaded a new version of Linux. Its only requirement was a "modern" processor and 1GB of RAM. It installed and works perfectly on my twelve year old laptop(?).

greybeard

@hadden89 I thought as much. Thanks for the update.

LonM

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