Carbon has only really been usable for large scale apps since 1.3, and given Apple's track record with shipping 'next generation' MacOSes I don't blame developers for waiting until they had the retail box in their hand before doing anything.
what actually happens? does it return a 404? does the connection time out? does it say server not found?
have you enabled web sharing? does your isp block servers on their network?
That's an easy one :)
Just add an action called visitWebPage (or whatever) to your object, connect the button to it, and add the following code in PB:
-(IBAction)visitWebPage:(id)sender
{
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openURL:
[NSURL...
For the true gopher experience, you need to use TurboGopher - http://www.macorchard.com/gopher.html
also see http://www.scn.org/~bkarger/gopher-manifesto
Unless you need broad hardware support, there shouldn't be any reason why you couldn't use OSX most of the time (RAM permitting), with the understanding you'll be spending most of your 'work time' in Classic until major apps are Carbonized.