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I entered http://google.com into IE and then after the page was fully loaded, I changed it into https://google.com. It didn't show me any difference. It loaded too though. I can't explain the basic ideas between the two. Could someone explain me a few things about this please ?

I also wonder why firefox hides "http://" whereas IE doesn't.

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  • Basic answer: HTTPS is for extra security, the web page is not meant to look any different, and the "http" is hidden in Firefox since it's not really necessary for the average user to see.
    – Wk_of_Angmar
    Commented Dec 17, 2012 at 1:17

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the 's' after "http" denotes secure connection.

Could be SSL or TLS. That gives you secure connection between the server and the host(you).

Different browsers might use different encryption.

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https://google.com is encrypted. If you were to search over public wi-fi through http://google.com, others on the network could see what you are searching for. With https://google.com, it is encrypted so your communications with google are private.

This is why logins should always be done over https, so others can't determine your password while it's being sent to the website.

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  • Although the login is certainly the most vulnerable part, any following communication which depends on the login / being logged in should be encrypted as well. In the end, everything you don’t want others to see should be encrypted - especially on a wifi with unknown participants (in the same network).
    – Kissaki
    Commented Dec 16, 2012 at 20:18
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Not just Firefox, Chrome and Opera also don't show the http:// in the address bar. This is intentional, so that the users focus on the meaningful part of the URL.

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