I have just found out that Vista is very very bad at handling WebDAV resources. I have a ReadyNAS box (and my friend have one too) where we would like to use WebDAV on when we work on projects. It works very nice on the Mac, but trying to access his NAS via WebDAV in Vista is impossible.
He has several Mac's and they work flawlessly with our NAS boxes via Webdav. But Vista? No go..
Is there any hope for a WebDAV plugin or enhanced functionality in the Advanced FTP plugin for this?
Jonathan, will this be in a future update of DOpus?
I don't know much about WebDAV but Wikipedia suggests you can restore XP's Web Folders feature in Vista by installing Software Update for Web Folders. (Sorry if you're already tried that!)
I can't speak for GPSoftware but I'm not aware of any plans that they (or anyone else writing plugins like myself) have for writing a WebDAV VFS plugin.
Is WebDAV like source/version control? It sounds like it but maybe I'm wrong. If it is, have you considered using Subversion? That works well with all versions of Windows and, I expect, OS X. It's pretty easy to set up on the server side, too.
Well what we use it for is exchanging files when we work on projects. It works brilliantly on MacOSX like any other folder but it's b0rked on Windows Vista. It should work in XP but even though I installed the webfolders update on Vista it did not help.
So I kinda hoped it would be possible in DOpus at some point. Oh well..
If my to-do list wasn't as long as an elephant's trunk then I'd take a look but I don't think I'll find the time any time soon. You could try dropping GPSoftware the suggestion of WebDAV support (their to-do list must be pretty long as well, but it doesn't hurt to ask).
There is a plugin SDK which allows programmers to add support for things like this to Opus, but finding a willing programmer is usually the hard part.
+1 for WebDAV support in DOpus! See this thread.
I sent a direct request to the support too, but never got answer from GP about the subject, so I have no idea if it's on their agenda.
So does the Software Update for Web Folders not work at all? Does net use q: webdav.example.com/share also not work anymore? Or do they work but you want something more in Opus?
Re problems with XP talking to Apache, a friend of mine says he used WebDAV from XP to Apache machines for a long time without any problem.
Maybe they work, maybe they won't. I've had all the times a lot of trouble connecting to WebDAV resources, especially the authentication thing is suboptimal with XP+ clients. And I don't like the idea of mapping drive letters to resources if there are other ways. My job requires me to manage almost five dozen websites; having to assign drive letters to them for making them accessible with DOpus would be a nightmare. Thank God there is sophisticated FTP support built in.
Only if FTP wasn't depreceated somehow, and to be considered insecure ... SFTP is an alternative indeed, but not widespread.
I'd love to implement a VFS plugin by myself, just if I were able to do. Being a pure web developer, it probably would take ages ...
