Chapter 1. Introduction

The World Wide Web has created an explosion in the availability of information, making vast amounts of content accessible from any computer connected to the Internet. Users can navigate between related sites or search for information in massive public indexes. Sites are available in hundreds of human languages and host all kinds of files, from plain text to sounds, images, and movies.

This wide interoperability and broad access was made possible through the use of two standards: Pages are formatted in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and retrieved with HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). These two standards can be implemented on almost any computing platform, from PCs to cell phones. A Web site creator can make a site public using free software, a cheap computer, and an Internet connection. As soon as the Web site is connected to the Internet, it can potentially be accessed by anybody with an Internet connection. Thus, the World Wide Web is more open than any other content or publishing system humankind has known.

The Web was intended from the start to be an editable medium as well as a browsable one. When Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first Web client at the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN), it was intended as a tool for collaborating scientists to put text online and link to each other's text without having to work through a centralized database of any kind. Thus, the first client could edit pages as easily as viewing them.

When the Web escaped its research laboratory creche and took over the Internet, most Web clients could browse but not edit. Browsing was considered the most crucial feature to making the Web useful, and browsing is much easier than editing.[1] The early emphasis on browsing led to a standardized HTTP protocol that lacked important authoring features: There was no way to rename or copy Web pages. There was no way to create folders to contain Web pages. There wasn't even a standard way to list the names of the Web pages inside a specified folder. Proprietary protocols soon emerged to fill the gap, but for nearly 10 years, no standard Web authoring protocol was available.

[1] A more complete and nuanced explanation of the development of early Web clients can be found in Weaving the Web [Berners-Lee00].

Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is the first standard protocol to address Web authoring [RFC2518]. It builds on and extends HTTP to bring the same benefits to authoring that the Web has already brought to viewing content. Web site authors can use WebDAV to remotely yet securely update their Web pages. Collaborators can use WebDAV to jointly author an electronic document without overwriting each other's changes or wondering which email or directory contains the authoritative version. Client software on all kinds of platforms can interact with WebDAV resources on a variety of servers. The Web is finally becoming a true authoring medium.



WebDAV. Next Generation Collaborative Web Authoring
WebDAV. Next Generation Collaborative Web Authoring
ISBN: 130652083
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 146

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