Surely the best answer is for the HTTP 2.0 working group to require the updated protocol to include useful hooks for file-serving scenarios.
Critically, there's only a few missing things in my estimation, and they revolve around resumable uploading and structured directory listings for GUI clients.
WebDAV was invented as a HTTP based way for accessing remote files. In general, support on the clientside is very good (built-in clients are in every major OS).
What hinders wide deployment is the server side: the most widely known implementation is mod_dav for apache and apache was never really made for a common use-case of FTP which is people using it with their unix account credentials for transmitting files.
If you have access to an OSX server, have a look at all the hoops they had to jump through to allow WebDAV with mod_dav and still do that in the context of the corresponding system user.
The other reason for FTP still being popular is legacy systems: over the years, I interfaced so many ERP systems for our product and usually, the only thing that customers can provide is good old FTP (or direct database access).
As this scenario doesn't involve unix accounts, I would love to use WebDAV for all the reasons outlined in te article, but body supports it on their end, despite it being around for 20 yars or so.
Comments
Surely the best answer is for the HTTP 2.0 working group to require the updated protocol to include useful hooks for file-serving scenarios.
Critically, there's only a few missing things in my estimation, and they revolve around resumable uploading and structured directory listings for GUI clients.
WebDAV was invented as a HTTP based way for accessing remote files. In general, support on the clientside is very good (built-in clients are in every major OS).
What hinders wide deployment is the server side: the most widely known implementation is mod_dav for apache and apache was never really made for a common use-case of FTP which is people using it with their unix account credentials for transmitting files.
If you have access to an OSX server, have a look at all the hoops they had to jump through to allow WebDAV with mod_dav and still do that in the context of the corresponding system user.
The other reason for FTP still being popular is legacy systems: over the years, I interfaced so many ERP systems for our product and usually, the only thing that customers can provide is good old FTP (or direct database access).
As this scenario doesn't involve unix accounts, I would love to use WebDAV for all the reasons outlined in te article, but body supports it on their end, despite it being around for 20 yars or so.