What is Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol that allows hypermedia data like HTML to operate online. HTTP is one of the main foundational layers of the internet and allows web pages, hyperlinks, hypertext, data, and more to communicate with different types of web servers that are needed to display information to users via a user interface (UI) or screen. HTTP not only interacts with HTML, but also with other web-based systems such as JavaScript, cascading style sheets (CSSs), application programming interfaces (APIs), and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) layers of the internet.