MIME

A MIME may include applications, video, audio, images and ASCII text. The protocol is an extension of SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol). MIME types were put in place so that web clients and servers could detect and manage other kinds of data besides ASCII text. A server places a MIME header at the front of any kind of internet transmission. A MIME header provides data that indicates to a client the type of application that should be selected. Some of these programs are built into the browser or a web client. For instance, all browsers come included with JPEG and GIF image players and can also handle HTML files. Other programs may needed to be downloaded. New MIME types must be registered with the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). Examples of MIME types: .3dm (extension) - x-world/x-3dmf .aif (extension) - audio/aiff .avi (extension) - video/avi .html (extension) - text/html .htm (extension) - text/html