Sol-gel methods offer a number of notable advantages for the synthesis of optical films and coatings. Areas of potential or actual application of this technology range from single layer and multilayer antireflection coatings to embossed planar waveguides and organic-modified oxide materials. The most notable advantages of these wet chemical nethods will be surveyed, as will progress achieved to date in a number of the most attractive representative areas. The technical bases for the success/failure in each case will be considered. Also to be discussed will be the prospects - in both the near-term and long-term - of future developments in the sol-gel synthesis of optical films, as well as the principal technical hurdles which must be overcome in order that such synthesis methods may achieve more widespread use in the future. Finally, a comparison will be made between the microstructures and characteristics of films and coatings deposited using sol-gel methods with those deposited from the vapor phase. In all cases, use will be made of recent advances in our laboratory in the subject area.