Naming Scheme for HTML Documents

When your HTML browser (Mosaic, Netscape, Lynx .....) retrieves a file it must know what to do with it. In general this is done via the filename extension -- that is the part after the dot in the filename. Thus HTML files are identified by name.html, where the .html extension marks an HTML document.

Here are some of the standard extensions, and their meanings:

.html
HTML document, containing text and HTML mark-up instructions.
.txt or .text
A plain text file. The browser presents the file as a block of text and does not process it for mark-up instructions. Note that the browser will assume a file to be a text file if nothing else is appropriate.
.gif
A GIF format image file.
.xbm
An X-Bitmap (black&white) image file.
.xpm
An X-Pixmap (colour) image file.
.jpeg
A jpeg-encoded image file.
.mpeg
An mpeg-encoded movie file.
.au
An aiff-encoded audio (sound) file.
.Z
A compressed file - compressed using the adaptive Lempel-Ziv coding. This compression/decompression program are commonly found on UNIX computers.
.gz
A compressed file - compressed using the GNU gzip program. This program is common on UNIX computers and is available on PCs and Macintoshes.
Browsers generally use the MIME type (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) of the document to determine how it is to be treated. MIME types are used to map particular types of files (determined either by their file name extensions or by some kind of examination of the file contents) to particular functions (such as image or movie viewers, sound processors, etc). HTTP servers attach MIME contents-types headers to every file they serve to the browser, so that the browser knows what type of file it is and what to do with it. For more information on MIME types see the MIME RFC Document.

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