As most nerds know, internet messages or "email", and later Usenet, preceded the www by a number of years. The original issue was opening different types of fi

As most nerds know, internet messages or "email", and later Usenet, preceded the www by a number of years. The original issue was opening different types of files from within an internet message. No matter how browser-centric today's computer users have become (thanks to marketing) the past remains close to the surface. As far as I can tell, the original solutions were never replaced; they were just ignored in favor of "middleware" (for lack of a better term) like Adobe Flash. In fact today's developers probably are very familar with the original solutions, though they might not recognize them as as such. I wonder how many could tell you where the Content-Type: header actually originated from? What is MIME? What is mime.types? What is a mailcap file? My browser of choice still has full MIME support so I can configure it to launch other, dedicated programs ("native apps"), based on file extension. For example, in theory I could launch ffmpeg or a video player (mplayer, vlc, etc.) from "within the browser" to transcode or play video. I imagine all the major video-serving websites used or still use ffmpeg in some capacity, not to mention any "web browser" that attempts to play video itself. Now the truth is I actually do not use MIME anymore. I prefer to download video first to my own localhost server using my own scripts and a program like tnftp, and then play it on any device I choose, with whatever "app" I choose. I like my video as a file that I can manipulate, not a pseudo "broadcast". As a side benefit perhaps, I have observed that with few exceptions I never see any preroll advertising when I download video to a file and then play it. The only time I have seen such advertising is when using a "modern" browser to "stream" (or progressively download) video. Not sure what this means if it means anything but I am happy to avoid the advertising.