Re: firewall problem (maybe)

Sounds like your firewall (or maybe a proxy server) is blocking or
mangling PROPFIND requests, which the Subversion client uses. The web
browser only uses GET requests, which is why you do not see the
problem there. Either fix your firewall or proxy, or switch to https
access, since with https the content of the packet is encrypted and
the proxy and/or firewall are not able to read its contents, so they
cannot mangle or filter it.