Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP, is a key component of the world wide web. It is the communications layer through which web browsers request web pages from web servers and with which web servers respond with the contents of the page. Like much of the internet it’s been around for decades, but a
recent announcement reveals that
HTTP/2, the first major update in 15 years, is about to arrive.
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The original HTTP protocol was the protocol first used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN where the web was created in 1991. This was improved over many years and finalised as
HTTP 1.1 in 1999, the current standard used worldwide. Over the years the web has changed dramatically, introducing images, complex style sheets and Javascript code, Flash and other embedded elements and more. The original HTTP was a simple protocol for a simple web, it was not designed to handle increasingly media-rich websites.
