What 'Content-Type' header to use when serving gzipped files?

Question

I'm serving gzipped copies of my css / javascript files. As per a tutorial, I set the content-type as application/gzip when serving these files. However, chrome doesn't seem to un-gzip these files, and for the javascript files I get a lot of 'illegal character' errors. If I view source, I still see the files as compressed, rather than uncompressed.

My question is, what should I set as the content type for these files, in order for the browser to interpret them correctly as gzipped css / js files, and un-gzip them? If I just set text/javascript or text/css, will the browser still interpret them correctly?

Edit: Full response headers:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
x-amz-id-2: UIBkZT/MuFxsmn+3nVOzEO63rRY99l3traCbMExUgSdGHUrOIPtNp34h1+ujYKmt
x-amz-request-id: 19346C9B01D8FC62
Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 03:59:51 GMT
Content-Encoding: gzip
Last-Modified: Mon, 12 May 2014 02:24:54 GMT
ETag: "561080b5e19f6daea2e74fd5a0623c79"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Type: application/x-gzip
Content-Length: 5153
Server: AmazonS3

Answer 1

Compressed content in the response is indicated in the Content-Encoding. The Content-Type should remain the same, that is, it should reflect the underlying media type that is compressed.

Content-Type: application/javascript
Content-Encoding: gzip

See sections 14.11 Content-Encoding and 3.5 Content Codings of RFC 2616 for more information.