title: File sharing over the internet - WebDAV / SMB / FTP
body: <p>We are developing a web based application which provides a repository of users case files.  Would like the user to be able to access these from their web browser with full read write capability.</p>
  
  <p>For an earlier generation of our system, which was hosted on a local Linux server with Windows clients we were able to share out a folder and access it with \\server\share_name\file.doc type links.  If these type of links were included in web pages (in internet explorer) and clicked on the file opened in MS Word and was savable directly into the shared folder.  These type of links however only worked in IE - not FF or Chrome</p>
  
  <p>Moving now to an internet based solution in our next generation of the system, we require similar functionality.  </p>
  
  <p>We are toying with the idea of having a WebDAV (or FTP/SFTP) share and mapping a local drive on each client machine to it to provide similar functionality.  This though will probably not work well with FF or Chrome with \\server\share_name... type links.  We have done brief testing and file:// links do not provide write capability once the file is opened.</p>
  
  <p>As a last resort we will be able to use manual file upload dialogs, but this is not ideal and would entail additional end user training.</p>
  
  <p>Has anyone any similar experience in this field and any possible solutions / best practice.</p>