MIME
Technology & Computing abbreviation · Internet & Web
| Stands for | Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions |
|---|---|
| Categories | Technology & Computing |
MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, an Internet & web abbreviation.
A standard that labels content with a type, such as text/html, image/png or application/json, and lets emails carry attachments, multiple parts and non-English text. Web servers send a MIME type in the Content-Type header so browsers know how to handle each file.
Example: The PDF downloads as gibberish because the server sends the wrong MIME type.
Usage notes
The current email specifications are RFCs 2045 to 2049 (1996), building on 1992 work by Nathaniel Borenstein and Ned Freed. IANA keeps the official registry, where the preferred term is now "media type". The X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff header stops browsers from guessing types, closing some security holes.
Related abbreviations
More Internet & web abbreviations
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- LAMP – Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP
- LCP – Largest Contentful Paint
- MDN – MDN Web Docs (formerly Mozilla Developer Network)
- MEAN – MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node.js
- MERN – MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js
- MPA – Multi-page application
- OG – Open Graph (protocol)
- PWA – Progressive web app
- RSS – Really Simple Syndication
- Sass – Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets
- SCSS – Sassy CSS