Dom updated and moved existing code so we now use gio when available.
That leaves...

1. Create emulator for gnomevfs interface.
2. When gio is available, default to using the emulator.

This cannot be 100% perfect since we will not be able to #include the
relevant gnomevfs header file.  But close enough.

This is going to be more work than expected.

Evidently, compiling is functional gio system is hard.  For Suse 10.3, for
example, neither the stable-gnome, unstable-gnome, or factory build have
been compiled in a way that allows http:// to work.

Therefore, we need to check in configure that the gio level is functional
before we can use it to emulate the gnomevfs api.  The emulation code itself
is easy and already done in my tree.

This problem has been fixed in our software repository. The fix will go into the next software release. Thank you for your bug report.