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Image MIME Reference
BMP

Windows Bitmap (Legacy Windows MIME Alias)

image/x-windows-bmp
VS

Tencent TAP Image

image/vnd.tencent.tap
Tencent-TAP

A complete technical comparison of Windows Bitmap (Legacy Windows MIME Alias) and Tencent TAP Image — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

BMP wins on browser support

Feature Support

Feature BMP Tencent-TAP
Transparency (Alpha) Yes ✕ No
Animation Support ✕ No ✕ No
Progressive Loading ✕ No ✕ No
HDR Support ✕ No ✕ No
EXIF Metadata ✕ No ✕ No
ICC Color Profile Yes ✕ No
Windows Bitmap (Legacy Windows MIME Alias)
image/x-windows-bmp
Extension
.bmp.dib
Container DIB (Device-Independent Bitmap)
Compression Uncompressed / Run-Length Encoding (RLE)
Algorithm
NoneRLE4RLE8
Color Depth 1-bit (Monochrome), 4-bit (16 colors), 8-bit (256 colors), 16-bit (High Color), 24-bit (True Color), 32-bit (True Color with Alpha)
Developed by Microsoft Corporation
Released 1985
Magic Bytes
42 4D
Full BMP reference →
Tencent TAP Image
image/vnd.tencent.tap
Extension
.tap
Container Proprietary Tencent Container
Compression Unknown (Proprietary)
Algorithm
Unknown
Color Depth Unknown
Developed by Tencent (Registered by Ni Hui)
Released 2014
Magic Bytes
Unknown (Proprietary)
Full Tencent-TAP reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser BMP Tencent-TAP
Chrome Chrome
✓ 1
 ✕
Firefox Firefox
✓ 1
 ✕
Safari Safari
✓ 1
 ✕
Edge Edge
✓ 12
 ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✓
 ✕
BMP

BMP Strengths

  • Universally supported by all major operating systems and modern web browsers
  • Maintains perfect, lossless fidelity because pixel data is stored without lossy compression artifacts
Limitations
  • Massive file size overhead due to a lack of modern compression algorithms
  • Legacy MIME strings like 'image/x-windows-bmp' can trigger validation warnings in strict security or API environments if unhandled
Tencent-TAP

Tencent-TAP Strengths

  • Officially registered with IANA, ensuring a unique MIME type identifier for internal Tencent network routing and content negotiation
Limitations
  • Completely undocumented and closed-source, making it impossible to decode or parse outside of Tencent's software
  • Shares its file extension (.tap) with numerous other established legacy formats, leading to frequent automated file misidentification by Node/Python libraries

When to choose which format

BMP
Use BMP when…
  • Legacy Windows Desktop Registry Associations
  • Older Enterprise Intranet Applications
  • Windows Graphics Archival
Tencent-TAP
Use Tencent-TAP when…
  • Internal Tencent Ecosystem Applications
  • Proprietary Mobile or Gaming Assets

More comparisons

BMP vs ACES → Tencent-TAP vs ACES → BMP vs APNG → Tencent-TAP vs APNG → BMP vs AVCI → Tencent-TAP vs AVCI → BMP vs AVCS → Tencent-TAP vs AVCS → BMP vs AVIF → Tencent-TAP vs AVIF → All comparisons →
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