HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It is the primary protocol used to exchange data between a client and a server over the World Wide Web. When a user requests a web page or other resource using their web browser, the browser sends an HTTP request to the server. The server then responds with an HTTP response, which contains the requested data, such as the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images that make up the page.
HTTP is a stateless protocol, meaning that each request and response is independent of any previous request or response. This means that the server does not maintain any information about the user's previous interactions with the website. However, to support more complex interactions, such as shopping carts and login sessions, HTTP cookies are often used to maintain some state information.
The latest version of HTTP is HTTP/3, which was released in 2020. It is designed to improve performance, security, and reliability by using a new transport protocol called QUIC, which is based on UDP instead of TCP. HTTP/3 also introduces new features such as server push, which allows the server to send resources to the client before they are requested, and a redesigned header compression mechanism that reduces the amount of data sent over the network.