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** Viewing QuIX Gopherspace with a Web Browser **

This was written on 22 Sep 2005. It may be a bit dated.

** The Newest and Best Gopher Client: Mozilla Firefox! **

In a world where there is practically no other way to access 
the Internet besides though the World-Wide-Web, It has been 
increasingly harder as the years have gone by to access 
Gopherspace. The early WWW browsers all included the ability 
to also access gopherspace because of its predominance in 
the early 1990s and up until just a few years ago, the 
leading browsers still had the capability as old code 
remained in newer products. (Microsoft IE is still simply a 
grossly expanded form of Mosaic.) Microsoft finally 
switched off their gopher compatibility (you can switch it 
back on), leaving only Netscape and Mozilla with rudimentary 
Gopher clienting ability among modern browsers.

Unfortunately, "rudimentary" is the description of how 
Netscape Navigator can access Gopherspace. Many of the newer 
additions to the protocol, referred to as Gopher+, can't be 
taken advantage of except through the use of stand-alone 
gopher clients that typically don't work well with newer 
operating systems. My own return to Gopherspace seemed 
doomed to futility, as fewer and fewer people could access it.

** Enter the Open Source movement! **

It is a wonderful thing to have enthusiasts able to contribute 
to projects and keep old things alive! I have always used 
Firefox (even before it was named this way) and enjoyed being 
a person on the fringe. There are few things more 'fringe' on 
the 'net than the continued use of the Gopher protocol, so you 
will know this is a trend! Firefox, for many years, shared the 
poor remnants of a Gopher client from its Netscape/Mozilla 
heritage and I never used it much in Gopherspace, instead 
relying on gopher-to-WWW translators to keep QuIX relavent, 
which I have always considered somewhat unpure and dirty. Now, 
Gopher has returned!!

I recently downloaded the 1.5 beta version of Firefox and, on a 
whim, I typed in the gopher address for QuIX: gopher://quix.us. 
I expected to see just the basic folders and files that most 
older browsers render, but I was elated to see abstracts and 
descriptions, without the server having to translate things into 
a webpage! Marvelous!!

I am happy to say that Gopher has made its way firmly into the 
21st century through the newest Gopher client: Firefox 1.5!

** The Old Standby: Lynx! **

Of course, the text-based Lynx browser, only lightly supported 
now but available for most modern operating systems, still is a 
great though quirky Gopher client for people who don't need GUI.
 
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