The MIME type application/x-zip is used to denote the presence of ZIP format files. The category for this MIME type is "application".

ZIP format files usually carry the extension ZIP. However, since the format has been widely adopted, other applications may use a different extension for distinguishing their own files that have been created using the ZIP format. Examples of this would be the XPI extension used by Firefox plugins and the JAR extension used by Java source files.

The ZIP format is a data compression and archiving format. Depending on whether compression has been used or not, a ZIP file will have one or multiple files and folders compressed for size reduction or stored as-is. "Deflate" continues to be the most popular compression algorithm used for compressing ZIP files although several other algorithms have been used and are still being used.

The ZIP format as created by the developer of the application PKZIP. The format evolved from the ARC compression that was prevalent at the time. ZIP is currently used and supported by multiple applications and even major OS" like Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and several Linux distributions. Modern versions of almost all GUI based OS" have built-in ZIP support.

Read how to open ZIP file.