Using the Overbite Add-ons for Gopher and CSO/ph/qi and Inline Viewing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Whenever you surf to a URL starting with gopher://, Overbite is activated and takes over in your current browser window. That means whenever you enter a Gopher URL in the address bar or click a link, your browser will notice that you are making a Gopher request and hand Overbite the URL for processing; Overbite will then access the gopher server for your browser and translate the gopher menu or request into something your browser can understand. To you, the user, it will integrate seamlessly into your normal browsing experience. You can view gopher resources in tabs like any web page, and you can bookmark, print or even download them for storage and reference later. Overbite transparently makes them look like any other resource to your browser. --- What is a Gopher menu? --- Gopher is organized around the idea of "menus" and other resources. Like any other computer-based menu, Gopher presents you with a list of choices or documents relevant to a particular topic, and lets you select from them to download either another menu, or a specific file or resource. Menu entries have a little icon next to them which is a representation of their "item type." This tells Overbite how to translate the data, or if translation should even be done. Overbite can handle or translate plain text documents, gopher menus, BinHex or UUencoded files, ZIPped files, GIF, JPEG and PNG images (along with many other image types), many sound and movie file types and PDF and HTML documents. It can also facilitate you linking to other resources, even web pages, from a Gopher menu, as well as connecting to hosts via Telnet or using a search facility. If Overbite doesn't know what type of resource it is, it will use a generic blank icon. You can hover your pointer over an icon if you don't know what it means. To select an option from the menu, simply click on it like any other link. This is functionally similar to but technically different from the World Wide Web in which the distinction between a document and a menu is blurred -- most documents are both. In Gopherspace, few documents are "menu-ified" -- instead, you have a menu that you select a terminal document from, much as you selected this particular document from the manual menu page. Some resources like this one are actually virtual files served by a database that to Overbite and to your client look just like any other file. All Gopher sites have a "root" or main directory, just like your hard drive would, and it generally is of similar importance. Sometimes it is more complex to navigate back to where you were, or you may start in the middle of a group of menus and want to go to the top. Whenever you are *not* in the root, a "U-turn" icon will always appear at the top right which you can click to immediately go to the "root" menu for the server you are accessing. This only appears if you are in a menu. You can also enter the root URL in the location bar. This will always be gopher:// followed by simply the host name (and the port number, if it is not the default 70). For example, this server's root is gopher://gopher.floodgap.com When you are in a menu, the relevant portion of the URL will also be displayed at the top left. --- Inline viewing --- Some documents and images can be seen right from the menu so you don't have to leave it. If the item has a + next to it on the left, you can click the plus icon and Overbite will embed the document or image right into the menu. The plus icon will become a - (minus), and you can click on that to hide it again. Documents take up about 1/3rd of your window's vertical size. You can scroll through the document if it is too big to fit in the frame, or click the link as usual to view the document by itself in your browser. Images are automatically scaled to fit your window's horizontal size (after they load). You can click on the image to view it by itself in your browser and scroll or zoom as appropriate. * If you use an extension that blocks JavaScript such as NoScript, this can interfere with inline viewing. See the troubleshooting portion of this manual for workarounds. You can still click on links normally to get around. --- Searching and interacting with Gopher applications and CSO/ph --- Some Gopher sites will request information from you, such as search engines or dynamic toolkits. A menu item that needs information from you will appear with a magnifying glass icon. The magnifying glass icon is also displayed for menu items that connect to a CSO system, such as a phonebook application or directory. When you select such an item, a requester will appear asking you for parameters to send to the service, such as keywords or arguments for the remote application. Enter these keywords as appropriate for your purpose. Your request will be sent in the clear. If you do not want to send the parameters, click Cancel to abort the request. CSO/ph/qi searches are only supported as queries, and are turned into requests with the template ``query [your parameters] return all''. Usually ``[your parameters]'' are search keywords. However, if you want to specify your request exactly and precisely, if your parameters start with ``query'' followed by a space then Overbite will assume you are giving an explicit query and will pass it verbatim except to close the connection at the end with ``quit''. You are responsible for making sure that your query is valid, and all queries are sent in the clear. Overbite does not currently support sending authentication information. Search servers can also be "inlined," in which case a form appears you can type in. Simply type and press RETURN to send information to the server. --- Web URLs --- Overbite supports the hURL: and GET methods of designating non-Gopher URLs. These become links to the URL specified, which is usually a Web page. These menu items appear with a globe icon, and should be treated like any other web link. Like any web link, if you hover your pointer over it, you can see where it connects in the status line at the bottom of your browser window. Overbite, for your safety, will suppress hURLs that attempt to perform certain unsafe operations. However, like any web site, you should only connect to links that you trust or expect. Occasionally a site may use a hURL as a springboard in a direct link. This practise is potentially unsafe and is not encouraged. To ensure you are not redirected to a site you do not trust, you are asked to confirm any directly linked hURLs before proceeding to the site the hURL references. --- Telnet and TN3270 --- Some menu items may be connections to a remote host using Telnet or a similar protocol. These items appear with a small computer icon as their item type. Overbite does not manage or make these connections. Your browser may need to be configured to enable use of a Telnet client, such as Microsoft Telnet or Mac OS X's Terminal.app. Refer to your documentation. Enjoy Gopherspace! .