Part 2. Using HTTP/2

In the first part of the book, I covered the need and motivation for a new version of HTTP, introduced HTTP/2, and described the ways to set up HTTP/2 for your website. For many people, this information is sufficient, and most sites should start seeing the benefits of upgrading to HTTP/2 even without making any other changes. HTTP/2 was designed to be easy to migrate to and to give most sites immediate benefits without requiring any changes.

To truly benefit from all that HTTP/2 has to offer, however, it’s useful to have a deeper understanding of the protocol and how it works. This part of the book describes the core aspects of this protocol. Chapters 4 and 5 cover the technical details of the protocol that allow website owners and developers to make the most of HTTP/2. Chapter 6 takes a break from the protocol itself to discuss what it means for web performance and what practices developers should change to optimize for this new HTTP/2 world.