Readers

This book assumes only a minimum level of familiarity or comfort with the way the Internet and the World Wide Web work. Readers might want to start with a good Internet book ([Stevens98]) or a good HTTP book ([Krishnamurthy01] or [Gourley02]) to familiarize themselves with the architecture of the World Wide Web and the protocols and practices that make it work.

This book can be used in many ways:

• IT planners can use this book to understand whether WebDAV might serve as a suitable document management standard, before making important software purchasing decisions.

• Software implementors who are interested in implementing WebDAV or in adding WebDAV functionality can use this book to learn practical details about WebDAV that aren't in the standard specifications and to learn about resources for the task.

• Custom application designers can use this book to understand how to design an application to use the WebDAV document model. This allows the custom application to work seamlessly with WebDAV-capable content applications such as Office 2000.

• Webmasters can use this book to understand how they can simplify and streamline their publication and authoring processes using WebDAV-enabled server software and existing HTML-authoring products. Like custom application designers, they will find out how document management can be customized to allow a custom publishing process or workflow process.