alt Hacker NewsIPFS (at least initially) was designed to be a BitTorrent replacement, a new version of it, which you can use not only with a special software, but also via HTTP and also directly inside the browser.
It basically works as BitTorrent, but also provides HTTP access to the files.
In fact, many pirate websites use IPFS in one way or another (either directly, by serving the downloads over one of the public gateway, or indirectly, for internal needs).
Couldn't you also just build a bittorrent client that hosts a local webserver to provide http access? I could never get what IPFS actually did that bittorrent didn't.