While I understand where you are coming from, and in fact use http on my personal site, I have to disagree about which is better. For the Web (Meaning HTTP/S),

While I understand where you are coming from, and in fact use http on my personal site, I have to disagree about which is better. For the Web (Meaning HTTP/S), compatibility back past 5-6 years seems kind of pointless. There's to much changing to fast at too many layers to be a really good target, unless you are serving an actually static site (Which is not a bad thing, it's what I do). Even then, HTTPS still has value, as it can prevent ISP's from injecting advertisements. I don't believe this is currently a large issue in the US, but I remember a recent discussion about bad behaviour by ISP's in India and other countries. Edit: I do however believe that (for a static site on https) it is a good idea to allow a fall back to http, assuming of course that you are fine with the contents being mitm'd. Also, I think the Gopher is a good thing to serve in this kind of situation.