Acronym for Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extensions. A protocol widely used on the Internet that
extends the SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol to permit data, such as video,
sound, and binary files, to be transmitted by Internet e-mail without having to
be translated into ASCII format first. This is accomplished by the use of MIME
types, which describe the contents of a document. A MIME-compliant application
sending a file, such as some e-mail programs, assigns a MIME type to the file.
The receiving application, which must also be MIME-compliant, refers to a
standardized list of documents that are organized into MIME types and subtypes
to interpret the content of the file. For instance, one MIME type is text, and it has a number of subtypes, including plain and html. A MIME type of text/html refers to a file that contains text written in HTML.
MIME is part of HTTP, and both Web browsers and HTTP servers use MIME to
interpret e-mail files they send and receive.