shepherdweb.com

Why does my media link open a page full of gobbledygook?

October 8th, 2005

Ever click on a link to a media file, like an mp3, and get a page full of gobbledygook? [screenshot] The most common cause of this is that the MIME type for the file is not configured on the server. The server must tell the browser what type of file it is sending otherwise the browser will try to display the file as plain text. This is an adjustment that must be made by the server administrator.

Common MIME Types
File Extension Type
.html, .htm text/html
.png image/png
.mp3 audio/mp3
.avi video/x-msvideo
.css text/css
.jpe, .jpg, .jpeg image/jpeg
.ico image/x-icon

Visit w3schools.com MIME Reference for a more complete list.

2 Comments »

  1. Michael wrote,

    Hey Shane,

    Just wanted to say thanks for the advice on the MIME-file-handling-whatever. Contacted my ISP, got the problem fixed and the MP3s are ( fingers crossed ) working great now.

    Much appreciated,

    -Michael

    Comment on October 12, 2005 @ 11:47 am

  2. Shane wrote,

    @Mike – no problem, glad you got it working! I checked it on my computer (Safari 2.0.1, Mac OS 10.4.2), and everything is working great.

    Comment on October 12, 2005 @ 7:01 pm

Leave a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post.

TrackBack URI