What is MIME or Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions?

An Internet Standard which actually is brought in use mainly to extend e-mail format is called or recognized with the name MIME or you may say Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. This Internet Standard is brought in use to support:

    * The attachments that are recognized being non-text attachments
    * The text other than ASCII in any character set
    * Body of any e-mail message which has multiple parts in it
    * Header information in a character set recognized as non-ASCII

Though the above mentioned functions of MIME are recognized being its main or major functions of use, however, the usage of Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions has grown beyond these above mentioned concepts which may also be defined as e-mail’s content describing. Now general content type describing has also been included in this Internet Standard in which the web content type describing is also included.

Generally every single e-mail which is currently being written by any human around the world is being sent in MIME format through SMTP along with all those e-mails that are known as system generated e-mails as well as automated e-mails. Generally internet e-mail is categorized as very close to MIME standards as well as to SMTP.

Sometime every single or normal human written as well as automated e-mail is categorized or you may say named as MIME / SMTP e-mail. MIME standards’ described content types are now commonly in use in addition to the e-mail content describing like in HTTP (recognized as communication protocol) which is used for World Wide Web. That data in HTTP is required to be sent or you may say transmitted just like the data included in any e-mail message but most often the data sent through HTTP is not actually a message like e-mail.

By : internettips.com