The HTTP protocol's first update in 16 years HTTP/2 officially finalized today

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According to TNW, IFTF HTTP Workgroup Chairman Mark Nottingham's blog message, the World Wide Web (WWW) Foundation Protocol HTTP 2, the first major upgrade in 16 years, was formally finalized today, and the RFC Editor has been submitted to begin the overall standardization of work.

As the basic protocol of WWW, the importance of HTTP is self-evident. However, since the adoption of HTTP 1.1 in 1999, although more than 10 draft versions have been introduced, the underlying protocol has not been significantly upgraded since these versions are considered to have room for improvement in all aspects, particularly performance.

But the industry's giant Google is one of the organizations and companies that have not given up their efforts to improve or even replace the HTTP protocol. In 2012, Google introduced the TCP-based Application layer protocol (Spdy, meaning faster), which basically followed the semantic representation of HTTP, while significantly improving performance to reduce the number of connections for the purpose of compression, Multiplexing and priority weighting to shorten the load time of web pages while improving security.

Since the Spdy, Google has launched efforts to push spdy into Internet standards. Although the HTTP/2.0 standardization Working Group accepted Spdy as the prototype of HTTP/2 in 2012, the competition included more than 10 versions of the HTTP draft and Microsoft's HTTP speed+mobility. Google has deployed spdy on its browser chrome, and its excellent performance has quickly won the favor of its users. Although the adoption rate of Spdy is only 3.4%, but because of the support of Facebook, Yahoo!, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress and other important websites, the spdy on the traffic load is not small. After nearly 3 years of competitive comparison, Google finally laughed at the end, Spdy became the basis of HTTP/2, and Google also announced in 2016 to abandon the spdy, in favor of HTTP/2. The Sparrow becomes the Phoenix, the search giant succeeds in usurper.

Although the overall standardization of HTTP/2 has not yet been completed, there are already Firefox, Chrome (PC and Android), Safari, Opera, iOS version safari, and Windows 8 IE 11 that have already supported http/2.0. HTTP/2 enables faster page loading, longer connection times, and server push. For developers, HTPP/2 does not need to make too many changes in development because it uses the same APIs as before.