Which webbrowsers use http/1.1 by default?

Question

Anyone have an idea where can I look up that information? I'm pretty sure that IE 4 has the "Use HTTP 1.1" parameter on by default and the "Use HTTP 1.1 through proxy connections" off. Got this information from here. I assume the later versions would have "Use HTTP 1.1" on too. How about older versions of IE? How about Firefox, Opera, Safari etc?

Answer 1

Most modern web browsers (at least IE since version 5, Firefox since version 2) don't even have an option to use anything but HTTP/1.1. Well, they might, but it'd be pretty well hidden.

EDIT: found this on Google, which provides partial information: http://schroepl.net/projekte/mod_gzip/browser.htm According to that page, IE4+, Netscape 6+, Opera 4+ and (I gather) all versions of Firefox support HTTP 1.1.

Answer 2

All common desktop browsers (Netscape/Mozilla, Internet Explorer, et al) in the last 10-13 years support HTTP/1.1. Internet Explorer 3.0 and Netscape 2.0 supported as far back as at least 1996 (Wikipedia agree with this).

Of particular note is that HTTP/1.1 is required for the HTTP HOST header, which is required if you want to serve different websites for different domains on a single IP address. As such if an HTTP client didn't support it, the user would be unable to access many websites.

I encountered an old smartphone browser that didn't support it about 9 years ago, but that's the last example I can think of where I'd even heard of an HTTP client that didn't.

I'd say that lack of client support for HTTP/1.1 does not need to be a real consideration today even if your doing something fairly esoteric (although I still remember it being a technical support headache over 10 years ago, trying to get people to upgrade from Netscape 1.x).

If you are writing a proxy you might want to think about it, but really even then I can't see it causing any real world problems as it's so fundamental to modern browsing. If someone is are running a browser as old (or as limited) as Mosaic 1.0 or Netscape 1.1 then they probably have bigger problems accessing content.