I am trying to optimize my site for all HTTPS. I know that Twitter is all HTTPS and I noticed that they don't redirect HTTP to HTTPS, but instead just initiate an HTTPS connection.
Here is a screenshot of Google Chrome's Network Activity, notice there is no redirect (301/302), the HTTP request (first line) just hangs as pending and the second line is the HTTPS page. Note, I have cleared all my browser cache so HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) shouldn't matter.
Here is another screenshot of the request/response for the HTTPS page. Notice, that it seems Twitter inserts some fields into the REQUEST, such as :scheme
How do they do this? I would assume its faster so that if a user types twitter.com into their browser, instead of a redirect (think extra network round trip), Twitter seems to seamlessly move to SSL (HTTPS).
A follow on question would be, does this work in all browsers?
