Open WebDAV folders directly from web with most browsers
April 22, 2010
Recently, Central Desktop released Web Folders. I’ve been in on the beta for about 6 months, and love it. We’re using it as a Dropbox replacement. Combined with the Shared Folders feature, we’re able to really get some positive results out of it. (I’ll try to write more on that, later.)
One of the recent complaints about WebDAV is that a nice feature is (surprisingly) only available in Internet Explorer. CD creates a link to each file to “Open via Web Folders.” Clicking the link will open your Excel spreadsheet, for example, in Excel. No need to check the file out, download it, open it, edit it, save it, check it back in. Once that file is open, it’s checked out to you, until you close it.
That’s a great feature (probably the only one, really) that IE can boast.
Unless you have the IE Tab extensions for Firefox or the IE Tab Classic for Chrome.
Install those plugins, and anytime you need quicker access to a file, just switch your rendering engine to IE. Central Desktop will think you’re using IE, and allow you to “Open via Web Folders.” I did notice that, at least in Chrome, the file preview wasn’t working when viewed in IE Tab. That shouldn’t really matter if you’re getting ready to open the file via WebDAV, though. Also, this will only work for windows, so Mac and Linux users might need to find another alternative.
Have you tried Web Folders yet? Tell me about your experiences in the comments.
