I have an html form that I'm sending to external customers so they can fill up and send it back to me.
The problem occurs when they click the submit button on the form.
For some reason in windows 7 64 bit, with outlook 2010 and explorer 9, mailto action doesn't work for me.
An empty outlook message is displayed and only the subject and recipients are added.
There is no attachment and no body text.
When I change the default browser to FF I receive the text I wanted in the body section instead as an attachment (postdata.att).
I can't use server code cause the html form is sent by outlook to external customers, so asp/php/cgi is irrelevant for me.
The external customers have no access to the organization's intranet and since the html form is sent as an email attachment, it's also not hosted on an internet server.
Does anyone has a solution?
Thanks,
mailto action doesn't work for me.
mailto depends on specific combinations of correctly configured browsers and email clients. It is not suitable for pubic use in an action attribute as support is too poor.
Use a server side process instead. Note that form support in HTML email is also poor, so you should link to a form hosted on the web.
I can't use server code cause the html form is sent by outlook to external customers, so asp/php/cgi is irrelevant for me.
You need to set up a public facing webserver.
Related
I learned to write html and css code a month ago. I am in the process of making a blog website for my friend. I got there when I made the about page. And I made a button there that would have made it possible to talk to my friend via email. And it didn't work :(
(I can't code in PHP)
I tried this:
<button type="button">Let's Talk!</button>
I thought it would open a page with only the email and nothing else. (of course the recipient and the subject)
The HTML you wrote should work, even if it's not strictly valid. To be clear:
You cannot send an email directly via HTML, it is up to the web browser itself how a href="mailto:" link is handled.
For example, Firefox will attempt to start the default email client of the operating system when a mailto: link is clicked. You can also configure what Firefox should do with mailto: links. There are similar configurations for other browsers and operating systems.
Websites and apps can also ask the browser or operating system for permission to become the default email client.
In short, control of mailto: links is up to the browser, and not something you can control from HTML.
I have an email page on my website with a form and tinyMCE and all that fancy stuff, but I also want to add a couple of links to the popular mail servers such as gmail, yahoo, and hotmail.
I've seen some links that go to the my Microsoft Office Outlook (which I never use), and I've also seen a gmail link that opens up gmail in a new tab with a form already open and a mailto: value already given. Just wondering how this is done if I, lets say, have a mailto: value to send and perhaps a subject and message.
Just to make it clear, I want three or four image links on my page, each one for a different mail server (gmail, yahoo...) and when clicked on, it opens a form partly filled out (a mailto:value and possibly a subject and/or message) fullscreen. Thanks.
It's not going to be easy, as you'll have to integrate with each one of these services. How about going at it a different way? For GMail (at least on Chrome) you can figure the web app as the handler for your mailto: links. With that, you can create a link that opens GMail, optionally with subject and body filled in. See RFC2368 for details, or try this link.
Most users don't have accounts on all of the web mail services you mentioned anyways, and using the mailto link allow the mail to the sent using the user's default e-mail client (may it be Outlook, or GMail) which most people prefer anyways.
So I have an html email that I am creating for my company for an email campaign we are going to be sending soon for an organization we represent. It contains 2 primary links, one to email a person at the organization we represent, and one to go to the landing page on the site of the organization. The landing page link works fine, the mailto: link does not when the email is viewed from Hotmail. It works on other clients besides Hotmail including Gmail and Outlook.
This is not because the computer which I am testing on does not have an email client installed. It has Outlook 2010 installed and registered as the mailto application. When mailto links are clicked on other sites (not hotmail) they work great...outlook launches a new message window as it should and fills in the subject and email. When we went to test on Hotmail, it shows the mailto link in the status bar, but no action occurs when you click the link. It's as if the link was not a link at all.
This is the link we are trying to use: (edited slightly for privacy)
<div class="button">Email a Resident Advisor</div>
This is placed within an html table cell. It has some basic css styling applied (all embedded in the html email itself). The button class is just designed to make the link stand out in the email...give it a red border and bold the link.
To be much more clear:
Works:
Gmail - IE9, Chrome, Firefox
Outlook - worked.
Does not work:
Hotmail - All browsers tried
The email was sent using the preview function of CampaignMonitor (handled by our QA guy, I don't have access to it as I'm rather new to the company).
I just need to figure out a way to make this work. Thanks in advance.
Two other programmer and I spent 2 days dealing with this problem earlier this week. I don't have the relevant links handy, but the long and short of the story is that this is a known issue and currently unresolved.
mailto: links will under no circumstance, work in Hotmail, they are removed or something.
We ultimately ended up adding copy instructing recipients to email foo#mail.com in lieu of clicking the link.
Here's a possible solution I found at http://windowsxp.mvps.org/hmposturl.htm that I modified for my purposes. It would require sending unique creative with a custom link to only your Hotmail recipients but it seems to work for me. Here's the href string I used:
http://www.hotmail.msn.com/secure/start?action=compose&to=email#domain.com&subject=My Subject Line&body=Email Body
This is a common problem with most webmail based systems. mailto: doesn't invoke them. Google mailto hotmail and you will find answers for Windows and for specific browsers. I think this will set it up for you
http://email.about.com/od/windowslivehotmailtips/qt/How_to_Make_Windows_Live_Hotmail_Your_Default_Email_Program.htm
Just add target='_blank'...use the 'a' html tag as...
<a href='mailto:Your MAILTO ID' target='_blank'>SOME Support</a>
This works in hotmail client, but it launch new browser instance additionally.
Known problem, I can confirm, is not working on Hotmail web mail only, rest of them work fine, we had the same problem here and we give up trying.
If you really really want that the only way is to use JavaScript, onClick change window location but that introduces a new dependency: JavaScript.
I want to generate a mail body in which i want to make a link, on which user clicks and add new contact outlook popup opens into the client screen.
How this can be done??
This is what vCard was invented for. Create a vCard file (from Outlook or using a third party application), and host it online on some webspace. Or, if needed, you can create a webpage that generates the vCard dynamically. Simply add a hyperlink to the vCard URL to the email message body.
Upon clicking upon the URL, Outlook will open up the contents from the vCard as a new Outlook contact.
That is, if Outlook isn't setup to block URLs, in which case you'd be better off sending the vCard as an attachment. Outlook signatures can be setup to contain a vCard.
I'm afraid this will most likely turn out to be impossible. Scripting is usually taboo in E-Mail clients.
This may be possible from within a web site using IE specific scripting (in VBScript, connecting to Outlook via COM or something), but security settings would block that from working for the vast majority of users anyway.
Does anyone know if when sending a html newsletter what kind of support the major email clients have for the subject= and body= parts of the mailto tag?
The behavior varies by both email client and source application. Here's a likely enough example from my own system, using pjp's link.
Send Mail
Mailto link followed within Outlook client successfully fills subject
Mailto link followed in IE successfully fills subject for Outlook client
Mailto link followed in Firefox fails for same Outlook client (subject text remains part of "TO" field)
I tried the same link in HTML emails read by gmail and Yahoo web clients.
Gmail correctly opens a new message with desired subject
Yahoo pre-fills the subject, but truncates at the space ("Hello" only)
That much variation on just one computer makes embedded mailto tricky to use. I bet that's why many email newsletters provide a "View as a web page" link in the header.
I imagine they've got quite good support for it. BUT!! But mailto will be used to send and email FROM the client TO me#somewhere.com . Thats definitely not you sending out a newsletter.
You'll have to send emails from the server, potentially in a background process.
EDIT:
Slight rethink. Are you talking about you using an admin section with a link with multiple TO addresses that will then open an email client to send out your newsletter? In which case, even though the major browsers probably do have decent support, you shouldn't rely on it out in the wild, since its not in the standard (I think), so they are not required to support it.
EDIT AGAIN:
rfc 2368 info in support of my previous edit