The little "HTTP" at the beginning of a web address doesn't mean much to most people browsing the Web today, but the protocol is a work that has accumulated decades of effort and revisions. HTTP 1.1 has been with us since 1999, but yesterday it was officially announced that HTTP/2, the next generation of the protocol, is finished.
We first discussed the SPDY protocol in November 2009. This Google development aims to reduce latency and page load times. But SPDY's plan is not to replace HTTP, but to manipulate the traffic that flows through the protocol, making the whole process faster and more secure. In July 2012, the group responsible for SPDY stated that the next step would be standardization of the technology. Five months later, the first draft of the HTTP/2 protocol was published, based on SPDY.
Mark Nottingham, chair of the HTTP Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force, published on his personal blog yesterday that HTTP/2 is finished. The approval of its specifications has formal status, and it is estimated that the general adoption process by browsers will begin in a few weeks.
What does this mean for users?
In summary, faster-loading pages, less work for the browser, and greater efficiency. We should not lose sight of the fact that HTTP 1.1 is 16 years old, the IT equivalent of a museum piece. Pages are much larger, multimedia content is everywhere, and security plays a critical role. HTTP 1.1 compatibility is guaranteed, but the main benefits of HTTP/2 are shared among multiplexing (multiple requests at once over the same path, which should reduce the so-called "head of line blocking"), header compression, and prioritization of requests.
HTTP/2 and HTTPS
It is also worth noting that HTTP/2 does not replace HTTPS. HTTP/2 can work via TLS, and it is estimated that major browsers will only support the protocol in that protected mode. Apparently, this is on the right track. Google has already confirmed the retirement of SPDY in favor of HTTP/2 for Chromium and Chrome. The presence of SPDY in the browser market was nearly complete, so the transition should not be too complex.
