The MIME Type application/x-zip-compressed is used to denote the encoding necessary for the ZIP file format. This MIME type falls within the category of "application".

The ZIP file format was developed to compress and archive data. It is a popularly used format for archiving and/or compressing data. A file in ZIP format is likely to contain one more files inside. The files inside the ZIP formatted file can be of any format and they do not affect the package file (the ZIP file) in any way. The files stored within it may be compressed to save space or they may be stored "as-is". Multiple compression algorithms have been used with the ZIP file format so far but the "Deflate" method has proven to be the most popular till date.

The ZIP file format was originally developed for an archiving application called PKZIP in 1985. It was made through advancing the ARC format that had been developed earlier. Since then, the format has gained a lot of popularity and the two major OS platforms � Microsoft Windows (versions since 1998) and Apple"s Mac OS (versions since 10.3) have made it the de facto compression tool. A lot of other applications use this format with their own assigned extensions, like Firefox (.xpi) and JAVA (.jar).