What Is MIME Type Association?
MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Exchange) was initially used to provide support for non-ASCII text in e-mail. It also supported non-text attachments and e-mail messages that had multiple parts. It is now additionally used by web pages to associate content with helper applications like Flash or Silverlight.
History
MIME was first defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force in 1992. There were just seven defined types: text, multipart, message, image, audio, video and application.
Known Types
Over time, the MIME types have been expanded. Internet browser clients typically recognize these MIME types and open the application associated with them. Examples of the "known types" are five types for text, four types for audio, 11 types for image, two for video and 13 for application.
Custom Types
According to Microsoft, you can create your own MIME type and its associations for any applications that you develop. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority keeps a registry of MIME types and encodings. They have an online application to register new media types.
