HTTP 1.0bis: a modest proposal

[2024-09-21 Sat]

Proposal:

A semi-retro version of HTTP focused on simplicity of implementation and suitability for traditional/retro web pages.

Rationale

Since as early as HTTP 1.1, development of the HTTP protocol has focused on the needs of large content providers and complex websites. This has intensified since the development of HTTP/2 focusing on relieving the symptoms of problems caused by the proliferation of single page web applications and complex JavaScript frameworks, and HTTP/3, which mainly solves problems for Google and Cloudflare. At the same time, it's clear that some parts of HTTP 1.1 are beneficial for everyone, and easy to implement. HTTP 1.0bis would consist of HTTP 1.0, plus the "good parts" of HTTP 1.1 and any current or future updates that are widely adopted, easy to implement, and consistent with the text-based framing of HTTP 1.0 (such as the proposed QUERY verb).

HTTP 1.0bis is not intended for use in large media servers or complex applications. It is intended for use on small hypertext and hypermedia sites. Scaling is specifically not a concern, or, rather, scaling /up/ is not a concern. Some of the features of HTTP 1.1 to be included in 1.0bis are included to support scaling /down/.