About MIME Types

A MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) type is an internationally defined data format. These types (and subtypes) are allocated by the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA) and a fuller description is given below. These values are used by the Dimensions CM web client to determine how to display a Dimensions CM request or item's content in the user's Internet browser. If you do not intend to use the Dimensions CM web client, you may leave this field empty, in which case a default MIME type is used. But in anticipation of future developments, we recommend that you make a relevant choice.

MIME types comprise several broad categories, with each category also having subtypes (see About the MIME Subtypes for details) defined by using a separator. Common examples of MIME types are "text/plain", "text/html", "application/msword" and "application/pdf".

The following table describes the broad categories.

Category | Description
text | Used to describe text of various types.
multipart | Indicates that the file contains multiple sections with potentially more than one MIME type.
message | Used for various types of messages.
application | A catchall description allowing for miscellaneous types of files.
image | Used for graphic files.
audio | Used for audio files.
video | Used for video files.
model | Multi-media modeling.

Related Topics

About the MIME Subtypes

About Defining Data Formats and MIME Types