If you want to use tcpdump to watch initiating connections (that is, the syn flag only is set indicating we're looking at the first third of the three-way handshake) on ports 80 and 443 you could do something like this:
# tcpdump '(tcp[13] & 0x3f = 2) and (dst port 80 or dst port 443)'
commandsconnectionsmonitoringnetworksecurityshelltcpdump