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Chrome Canary now uses the web's speedier official standard
If you've been wondering about the fuss over the speedier HTTP/2 web standard, you now have an opportunity to check things out first-hand. Google has released the first version of its experimental Chrome Canary browser with support for the final draft version of HTTP/2. You won't see the full benefit until the websites you visit also support the new spec, but you also won't be left out as the internet switches over. With that said, remember that Canary is a bleeding edge build -- you may want to wait for a more polished version of Chrome if you'd rather not grapple with bugs just to save a few hundred milliseconds. [Image credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]
What you need to know about HTTP/2
Look at the address bar in your browser. See those letters at the front, "HTTP"? That stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the mechanism a browser uses to request information from a server and display webpages on your screen. A new version of the reliable and ubiquitous HTTP protocol was recently published as a draft by the organization in charge of creating standards for the internet, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This means that the old version, HTTP/1.1, in use since 1999, will eventually be replaced by a new one, dubbed HTTP/2. This update improves the way browsers and servers communicate, allowing for faster transfer of information while reducing the amount of raw horsepower needed.
Google to speed up Chrome with the next version of HTTP, not its own tech
Google is giving up on its homegrown SPDY protocol, which aimed to deliver a faster web browsing experience in Chrome than tried and true HTTP. Instead, it's adopting HTTP/2 -- an upgraded version of the protocol that's close to being standardized -- in Chrome 40 in the next few weeks. All of that working developing SPDY wasn't for nothing, though. Google says HTTP/2 includes several features that evolved from its protocol, including multiplexing and header compression, both of which allows you to efficiently make multiple page requests at once. Don't expect your web browsing to speed up immediately with HTTP/2 -- it'll take some time for Google, other browser makers, and developers to fully take advantage of its many improvements -- but it lays the groundwork for a faster and safer web over the next few years. As for SPDY, Google says it'll dump support for that entirely in early 2016.
