Configuring Server MIME Types

The Internet Media Type – better known as MIME type – is an Internet standard for indicating the format of a message. It is used extensively in many Internet protocols. In the context of the Web in particular, it’s used as part of the HTTP protocol to help the browser understand how to parse and render content that it receives.

For each request made from a browser to a Web server, HTTP requires that the server includes a Content-Type header identifying the format of the response. Upon receiving this Content-Type header, the browser can decide how to decode the response and render it in an appropriate form.

In the mobile context, the server sends MIME types to the mobile browser. Many Web servers, by default, do not have the correct MIME types defined for mobile markup standards. It is important set up the Web server to serve the right Content-Type headers for mobile markup languages. At best this may cause the browser to render the page more slowly; at worst your pages may be unreadable or result the mobile device to produce an error message.

Use the value

for all recommended mobile content types (XHTML-MP and XHTML Basic).