Comparing Pocket Gopher and DiggieDog Android Gopher Apps


I have Android devices.  Installing a gopher app 
on my phone proved to be a quick on-ramp, allowing
my interest in gopher to take root.  

This entry will compare the two main gopher apps 
for Android: DiggieDog and Pocket Gopher.

First, I'm glad we have both these apps. I hope they 
will both continue being maintained and enhanced. 
I have used both of them quite extensively.

DiggieDog
=========

DiggieDog is available on Google Play 
Store, and is ad-free.

Be certain to spell the name exactly 
right (DiggieDog).  Leave out one of the 
'g's or put a space between Diggie and Dog, 
and it won't appear in the list.

DiggieDog version 1.5 has been 
installed about 1,000 
times, according to Play Store. The last update was July 3, 2018.

I find DiggieDog to be very stable.

In using DiggieDog, I have the 
following suggestions 
to make it better and easier to use.

Pinch zoom would be very helpful. 
The text can be difficult to read. 

There is no user-selected text sizing, 
and no font selection. A night-mode 
would be very useful.

Page titles appear as regular text and are difficult 
to discern.

Apparently, DiggieDog supports JavaScript, since the 
settings allow you to disable it.

It's easy to set a gopher page as your "Home Page," 
although I haven't discovered a  way 
to return to the home page.

DiggieDog lets you bookmark gopher 
pages you want to revisit. 
The next time you use DiggieDog, 
it will open to the 
last gopher page you were on.

When displaying links and search 
boxes, DiggieDog always 
shows the url beneath the folder or 
search box.  Thats not a bad thing, 
but it is not always useful or 
wanted, and tends to clutter the
screen.


Pocket Gopher.
=============
PocketGopher is available from 
the F-droid.org app store 
and is ad-free.  You probably 
don't have F-droid on 
your Android device.  Not being 
in Google Play makes 
Pocket Gopher more difficult to 
install, but it's not 
an insurmountable problem.

Pocket Gopher 1.2.4 was updated "6 
months ago," or January, 2019. 
There is no information on F-droid 
about the number of times 
Pocket Gopher has been installed.

Pocket Gopher opens to a list 
of your favorite gopher pages. 
It's easy to add and subtract 
pages from this list.

I love that Pocket Gopher is 
night-mode only, since night-mode 
is easy on my eyes and for reading 
text.  However, it would be 
nice to have a black-on-white 
day-mode option.

Pocket Gopher has a default font, 
but also gives you a choice 
to use Monospace font, which I prefer.

Pocket Gopher does not show the 
gopher or url links below the 
selector. I like that, since it 
presents a cleaner look.  

Page titles are distinguished 
and easier to discern.

Apparently, Pocket Gopher does not 
include support for JavaScript, 
and there is not support for pinch zoom.

One serious problem I have with 
Pocket Gopher is that it crashes 
whenever I select a http link.  
I find Pocket Gopher less stable 
than it should be on my device.


So which do I prefer?  

I like the the layout and night-mode 
of Pocket Gopher.  But I 
like the stability and ease of 
installation of DiggieDog.  I use 
them both.

If I had to choose one, I would choose 
Pocket Gopher for the cleaner presentation 
and night-mode.