The Gopher protocol was a precursor to the World Wide Web. Gopher appeared shortly before the Web and was quickly obsoleted by it. Nowadays it is kept alive by a handful of enthusiasts.

Pocket Gopher is a client for this protocol running on Java ME (a.k.a. J2ME) devices. I wrote it because it was ridiculously easy, and because there isn't any other that I could find, at least not as of 2010-07-11.

News

2010-08-27
Rauscher, from Germany, tells me PocketGopher works on the Nokia 3110 Classic. Yay!
New features coming soon, thanks to an enthusiastic contributor.

Features

  • Supports directories, text files, images and Web links (via the device Web browser).
  • Session history, basic back function and caching.
  • Paginated display for large directories and text files.
  • Works on any port, not just 70 (surprisingly enough, that's worth mentioning).
  • Forward compatible with Gopher+.

Compatibility

As of 2010-08-27, Pocket Gopher is known to work on the Nokia E51 and the Nokia 3110 Classic. It should run on any modern Java ME device, though. More compatibility reports are welcome.

Download

As of 2010-07-23, Pocket Gopher should be considered beta quality. It's usable, but needs more testing, epecially security-wise.

Pocket Gopher - a basic Gopher client for mobile devices
2010-07-23 Felix Pleșoianu <felixp7@yahoo.com>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

To do

  • more testing
  • code cleanup
  • search queries
  • bookmarks
  • saving content

Other clients

Firefox
(natively before version 4.0, or via the Overbite plugin)
Konqueror
(via the kio_gopher plugin)
Lynx
The famed text web browser supports Gopher natively
Last modified: Fri 27 08 2010, 09:38:53 UTC