MIME stands for "Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions." MIME was originally invented for describing the content of email.

"MIME types" are generally used for identifying the type of information in a file. While the file extension .htm is not formally understood to mean that the file is an HTML page, there is no requirement that it mean this, and many HTML pages have different file extensions.

In case of HTTP protocol used in web browsers for communicating with web servers, the "file extension" of the URL are really not used to determine the type of information that the server will return. In some cases, there may be no file extension at all at the end of the URL.

So the web server in terms specifies the correct MIME type using a Content-type: header while responding to the web browser's HTTP request.

Some common MIME type are as follows: