ARCHIVED: What is the difference between Gopher and World Wide Web?

Gopher is a largely superseded text-only precursor to the web. It allows you to view plain text available on servers around the world. Additionally, you can download shareware or freeware programs, graphics, sound, and movie files to your desktop. Once you've downloaded a file, you must launch the appropriate software to view or use it. Many Gopher information providers also have search engines, or textual databases, that help you find information more quickly.

The World Wide Web uses many of the same components of Gopher, but adds the capabilities of hypertext, automatic display of graphics, and greater ease of use.

The web's hypertext and hypermedia approaches to information presentation allow you to easily select your own path through documents according to your personal interests. When you select a phrase or an icon in a web document that is hypertext active, your web browser seeks out the Internet server that provides the linked file and retrieves it for you.

Images in web files are automatically displayed within the body of a file by browsers capable of displaying graphics, rather than by separately launched applications as in the case of Gopher. Because graphics, fonts, and flexible formatting are incorporated in web documents, they often appear more like illustrated brochures than menus.

Web browsers can connect to Gopher servers, but Gopher browsers cannot access web sites.