Integration of multimedia on the Web pages requires several things that have to be set on both client and server side. Web servers (http daemons) usually need the appropriate MIME type of the multimedia file. This means that the type should be listed in a configuration file known as mime.types. A MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) type definition consists of two parts:
type/subtype

For example: image/gif

There are two kinds of MIME types - official and unofficial. Unofficial (almost all multimedia file types except graphics and MPEG movies are considered as "still in the test period" and therefore unofficial) have their subtype beginning with the "x-" prefix.

If multimedia material provider wants users to have images incorporated in their WWW browser HTML tag IMG will be normally used.

For usual multimedia files the EMBED tag enables creator to specify many options such as width and height parameters, whether the plug-in should start playing the media automatically upon it's arrival at the client side, whether the plug-in's controls are visible or not, etc.

Both IMG and EMBED are expected to be replaced by the OBJECT tag in the future. HTML 3.0 standard allows multiple implementations of the same object as, for example a Java applet, a .MOV movie and an OLE object. The browser will pick content that matches its capabilities.