A system used for the ASCII (American Standard for information interchange) encoding of binary data for the SMTP transfer of email over a network such as the internet.

MIME codes are also used to let the browser know what type of file to expect when it has requested it. For instance, if a browser requests a GIF file, then the host will send in the CONTENT TYPE HEADER the MIME string to indicate that the file is indeed a GIF file and should be processed accordingly.

Likewise if the file requested is a .zip file then the host will return the string in the CONTENT TYPE HEADER to indicate it is a zip file. When the browser receives this MIME string it can act accordingly, whether that be simply displaying it or opening another program or plug-in to deal with the specified file type.

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