WebDAV seems to be largely an empty promise due to the lack of reasonable, compatible clients.
>>90% of all clients are Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft Windows' Web Folders support WebDAV to a *small* degree. Yet the way this is integrated into the OS is at such a level that >99% of all Windows apps are incompatible in full or part with Web Folders (e.g. you can't directly save to or open from web folders from these apps). Even Microsoft Office is only compatible with web folders in the most common menu items (e.g. open/save) whereas various other file dialogs for importing, object inclusion, etc, are not compatible with web folders. The kicker for app developers: the OS does not give you a normal file path (or File object in Java) for objects in web folders -- thus requiring special action to be compatible.
I've tried products which claim to give the level of integration that Microsoft failed to achieve. Unfortunately, they proved unstable and unreliable.
Now various UNIX flavors may well provide file system mappings to WebDAV (and the OS X one sounds nice), but unfortunately for those who produce servers that would like to be able to just expose themselves to clients via WebDAV this is essentially useless for >>90% of the market.
I absolutely disagree. Windows comes with two clients (an explorer extension and a filesystem driver), MacOSX comes with a drriver, and there's also a Linux FS. Many major applications (for instance Adobe or OpenOffice) support it as well. WebDAV is robust and interoperability is actually quite good.
Julian
-- <green/>bytes GmbH -- http://www.greenbytes.de -- tel:+492512807760
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