what is a MIME file?

Answer 1

Short for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, a specification for formatting non-ASCII messages so that they can be sent over the Internet. Many e-mail clients now support MIME, which enables them to send and receive graphics, audio, and video files via the Internet mail system. In addition, MIME supports messages in character sets other than ASCII.

There are many predefined MIME types, such as GIF graphics files and PostScript files. It is also possible to define your own MIME types.

In addition to e-mail applications, Web browsers also support various MIME types. This enables the browser to display or output files that are not in HTML format.

MIME was defined in 1992 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). A new version, called S/MIME, supports encrypted messages.

Answer 2

MIME isn't a file in itself, it's a way of determining which type of file something is. So for example an e-mail message might have attachments with MIME types text/html for the text, image/jpeg for the graphic, and text/plain for the plain-text version of the message. The same system is used on the web to tell the browser what to do with each element of a page.

Answer 3

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions or Multimedia Internet Message Extensions