MIME Types tell browsers how to handle specific file extensions. For example, the text/html MIME Types equates to .htm, .html, and .shtml extensions on most servers, telling your browser to interpret all files with those extensions as HTML files. You can alter or add new MIME Types specifically for your site (Note: You cannot alter the system defined MIME Types values). MIME Types are often used to handle new technologies as they appear. When WAP technology first appeared, no one had these extensions set up on their server. With MIME Types, however, you could have set it up yourself and began serving WAP pages immediately.

To learn more about MIME Types, view the WikiPedia web page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME.