Is there a way to implement a mailto: link that works with webmail clients?
Edit - so a traditional mailto link is (as I suspected) not going to work. So has anyone seen anything similar to those rss buttons you see with a variety of the most popular sites on?
The links are handled by the user's browser. GMail has a client-side install (GMail Notifier) that lets you specify that you want GMail to handle all mailto links.
But there's no way for a web page to specify that it's mailto link should be handled by a webmail app (even if it could, how would you know which one?).
That's really more of a web client issue, it's already available for Firefox:
http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2008/04/firefox-3-web-protocol-handlers/
but ultimately it's down to the user to decide how their browser handles mailto links.
Create a text file named MailtoWebMail.reg with the following content...
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command]
#="\"(BrowserExecutable)\" (Parameters)"
where (BrowserExecutable) is replaced with the complete path to your browser (ie. C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe)
and (Parameters) is replaced with the appropriate line for the mail service as described below...
GMail
"http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&to=%1"
Hotmail
"http://hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?To=%1&mailto=1"
Yahoo Mail
"http://compose.mail.yahoo.com/?To=%1"
Netscape Mail
"http://webmail.netscape.com/compose.adp?mailto=%1"
Mail.com
"http://mail01.mail.com/scripts/mail/Outblaze.mail?composeto=%1&compose=1"
Opera Web Mail
"http://mymail.operamail.com/scripts/mail/Outblaze.mail?compose=1&did=1&a=1&to=%1"
Note: There should not be a blank line after the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE] line
MikeB
I am just brainstorming here. You might be able attach a Javascript handler to the link that asks the user if s/he wants to login to a webmail account (along with a list of providers). If you have the correct URLs for the webmail providers, you would then be able to invoke them on the basis of the user's choice. If the user answers no, return true from the handler and presumably the link would work normally.
See, for example, http://toric.blogspot.com/2005/07/gmail-compose-link.html and http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000238.html
Here are 2 Opera UserJS examples that you can inspect to give you and idea of how you can do it on a regular pages. (Obviously, UserJS-specific functions wouldn't work in a regular page, but you can use regular events.)
This one catches left-clicks on mailto links and opens them in Gmail for example. It can also handle forms.
http://shadow2531.com/opera/userjs/BeforeMailtoURL.js
This one catches all mailto actions, has a more generic parser (that supports any hname and not just to, cc, bcc, subject and body) and has a better format string syntax:
http://shadow2531.com/opera/userjs/BeforeMailtoURL.zip
Basically, you have to find a way to intercept mailto link actions. You can do this with click event listeners on links and submit listeners on forms (if you really want to support forms). (It's easier to use a click event listener on the whole window and just filter it to find mailto actions. That way, you catch mailto links that are dynamically added at some arbitrary time.)
Or, you can just run through the page and process all the mailto links.
But, if you want to intercept mailto actions in the address field, via window.open or document.location etc., you'll need something like HTML5's registerProtocolHandler or something like Opera's webmailprovider.ini support. You can use registerProtocolHandler in Firefox, but by default, it's restricted to the domain you set it on.
So, basically, you either convert mailto links to http(s) webmail compose URIs up front, or at the time the mailto action is invoked. The latter works much better.
Converting a mailto link to a webmail compose URI involves a few things. First, you need to know what query string variables the webmail accepts. Then, you need to parse the mailto URI to split it up into the parts you want. Then, you need to decode and re-encode (to normalize) those parts. Then, you need to join multiple occurrences of hvalues together. And, you need to handle things in a case-insensitive manner and check for and escape unsafe characters and %HH etc.
For the parsing, you can do a quick and dirty regex, but you'll get better results with a full mailto URI parser and normalizing functions.
So, if you just want to handle left-clicking on links, you can do that cross-browser. For more than that, you have to use any hooks the particular browser gives you.
Hypothetically, assuming the webmail client passes arguments through the authentication process (or the user is already authenticated), I don't see why this is so impossible. It can't be done in the simple mailto: way, but it'd be possible to provide a selection of links to popular webmail services and use Javascript to intercept clicks on mailto: links such that the user is presented with a drop-down list of possible webmail services (or their local email client). The links would carry the To:/Subject: address but formed in whatever structure that webmail service requires.
If you're using a Google Apps email account (hosted email), than Gmail Notifier will not work. You can use a bookmarklet though, to change all of your mailto: links to links that point to your webmail.
Here's a bookmarklet I wrote to do just that, it will highlight all fixed links in red.
javascript:for(var i=0;i<document.links.length;i++){var a=document.links[i];if(a.href.indexOf('mailto:')==0){a.href='http://mail.google.com/a/sample.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url='+a.href;a.style.backgroundColor='red';a.style.color='white'}};return true;
Just be sure to change http://mail.google.com/a/sample.com to whatever the proper hosted address is for you.
I suppose this will work with a number of other email clients if you just change that link around.
Kind of an old thread, but nobody has quite answered it yet, so here goes.
As blesh nearly says above, while there's no way to get "mailto:" to go to Gmail, there's another way to skin this cat that works just fine in many situations. Just change the URL. Remove the "mailto:" prefix and insert "https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=".
This seems to work like a charm, whether or not the user is coming in through Google Apps. If the user is not logged in, he'll be walked through that step, and then Gmail will still kick off a new message. The only downside I've noticed is that if (when?) Google decides to change their bookmarking scheme, this may need a bit of tweaking.
It may make sense to perform this transform either before or after the URL is in the DOM, depending on your situation.
Oh and double click the MailtoWebMail.reg to insert the command into your registry.
MikeB
Has anyone seen numbers indicating what percentage of webmail users have configured their systems with plugins etc. to properly have mailto: links sent to their browser / webmail system rather than to a desktop app? This seems critical in deciding whether to use mailto: links on a site or a contact form, but I'm having trouble coming up with numbers to guide the decision.
Related
Is JavaScript supported in an email message?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-mail_clients
Old clients, such as Lotus Notes, Mozilla Thunderbird, Outlook Express, and Windows Live Mail all seem to have supported some sort of JavaScript execution. Nothing else does.
It seems like a bad idea security-wise, so I would expect this to be a feature that won't always be around, even in these clients.
Short answer
No
Descriptive answer
It depends. But the email is not guaranteed to behave in the way you want it to. Different email clients handle JS differently. Most of the newer email clients do not support any of it since it is potentially very dangerous to support script execution in a desktop application which contains so much of your personal info.
I had a use case where I needed to use JS in an email. I tried out on the web client of outlook and desktop client as well, and it turns out outlook just wipes out the script part of your HTML email. There might be some other email client which does support JS execution, but given that you cannot control the client where your email would be viewed in the client machine, it's not a good idea to embed any scripts in the HTML email.
Its advised to keep your HTML email as simple as possible, no JS, and the least CSS you can do with (because, again, different email clients have varying support for CSS as well) eg: outlook's web client was not even recognizing an HTML button tag in the email. I had to use an anchor tag and some CSS on top of it to mimic the display of a button.
Bottom Line - Don't rely on Javascript when working with HTML email content.
No, generally speaking email readers do not allow javascript.
Other answerers have suggested that the answer is "No."
On the other hand, an html attachment will probably get opened in an environment that runs Javascript.
EDIT: It was suggested that I haven't properly answered the question so here goes a more complete effort.
Summary: I would expect that many or most users receiving an html-formatted email containing embedded Javascript will see it run and have run tests to confirm that this is true in some environments. But Javascript WILL be blocked for some users.
The protocols (specifically RFC2854) explicitly address scripting (within the text/html message body type) with the statement that:
In addition, the introduction of scripting languages and
interactive capabilities in HTML 4.0 introduced a number of
security risks associated with the automatic execution of programs
written by the sender but interpreted by the recipient. User
agents executing such scripts or programs must be extremely careful
to insure that untrusted software is executed in a protected
environment.
So the protocols do support Javascript, but which user agents do?
My (ancient) email reader uses a table to specify which viewer software to use for each mimetype, diverting html content to my favorite web browser. Almost all current web browsers support Javascript (and some issue dire warnings when you try to turn it off!) Do modern email agents include internal html interpreters and, if so, is the javascript turned on or off? I've checked documentation on Thunderbird and find that javascript seems to be turned on by default but can be turned off: http://codeverge.com/mozilla.support.thunderbird/simple-html-tags-reference-docume/2030160
I have noticed that some (?many?) users now access their email from a browser directly (webmail is one such platform) rather than running separate email software. All such platforms which I have tested so far do run any Javascript embedded in the html of the email message. However some such environments, depending on user security settings, do not automatically fetch external links (Javascript or pictures or other) and so can only run external Javascript from a file which is included as an attachment to the message. The same would be true of any offline email reader on a device without a current internet connection.
The above applies to javascript embedded in the main message part of the email body. One can also have html explicitly given as an "attachment", which if saved and then opened would be displayed in a web browser, wherein Javascript is available with very high likelyhood. Therefore, one might included a second copy of the javascript enabled email as an html attachement with an alternative text/plain main body and/or tag in the main text/html directing the user to the attachment.
I've been thinking about this because some of my acquaintances insist on sending me "email greeting cards" which consist of a text message directing me to a link which I've found so unsatisfactory that I refuse to even consider loading it just on principle. I have written and sent email greeting cards with interactive graphics and music and even games using embedded javascript and been satisfied with the result.
Therefore, I maintain that the correct answer is "Yes" both on the grounds that the protocols specifically address scripting and on the grounds that all the email agents I personally use ran the Javascript in my test emails.
You aren't going to get executable JavaScript onto a server and into a mail client. But emails DO support links, you can always link to your content within an email.
For most mail clients, no.
No email client support javascript due to security concern
Try to send a mail with this HTML content
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<button onclick="this.innerHTML=Date()">The time is?</button>
</body>
</html>
It may be, but mail clients won't read it & mail servers may reject it. So leave it out.
Javascript is not supported in emails.
You can view an email with JavaScript working with Windows Live Mail, but can't add JavaScript to a new email you wish to send.
JavaScript also works with saved .eml files.
Mozilla Thunderbird version 60.7.0 can't view or add JavaScript.
(If you save an eml file with Thunderbird, the code will work if file is then loaded with Live Mail)
You can send an email with JavaScript using PHP code.
Some email websites may support it, but the few I used don't. (AOL, uk2.net, GMail)
Short answer: No it is not supported in an email message
Long answer:
I have tested it with two email readers. Outlook (online) and OE Classic. As OE Classic is very outdated (I use it on windows 7), it does support JavaScript and I tested it with an alert button. However, the newer Outlook does not even support buttons, which showed up as plain text. So to conclude JavaScript is only enabled on some, usually older, email readers but not on new ones such as Outlook.
I want to open a couple of webpages. Some require User-name password. Others requires to fill in certain files in a webpage.
There are multiple ways for AutoHotKey to fill in web forms, but all are based on "com" which only works with IE
I've googled a while for examples in what fill in webforms and/or login in Crome, but found non so far. Does anyone has an example of an AHK script what fill in fields in a webpage/form
First off I'm going to start by stating that you should have included code, after all this is a code review site rather than a "Hey I need codez" site...
Now to answer your question:
You are correct, COM Objects are the best way to interact with Websites in Windows, it's dead simple and just works (in IE). Since Chrome doesn't support COM, you are left with only working with within the limitations of the browser accepting keystrokes.
Your best shot is to use the Send command to navigate to your target field (I believe sending Tab multiple times when the window is active should work) and than Send the data you wish.
I would also suggest looking into #IfWinActive and BlockInput so that you won't accidentally send an inappropriate key stroke while filling in these forms.
There may be better options for this, such as KeePass or the like. Also it's generally not a good idea to store passwords in plain text, IE within an AHK Script.
Correct, it's not possible to use Com objects with Chrome, however this site has a ton of entry level how-to's to get started with using the com object in IE. This includes how to send specific fields text (without using the send or sendinput commands), and how to triggers onclick events on existing elements (without clicking on them).
This was were I started when I needed to learn how to interact with the com object.
https://autohotkey.com/board/topic/64563-basic-ahk-v11-com-tutorial-for-webpages/
I've just noticed that the long, convoluted Facebook URLs that we're used to now look like this:
http://www.facebook.com/example.profile#!/pages/Another-Page/123456789012345
As far as I can recall, earlier this year it was just a normal URL-fragment-like string (starting with #), without the exclamation mark. But now it's a shebang or hashbang (#!), which I've previously only seen in shell scripts and Perl scripts.
The new Twitter URLs now also feature the #! symbols. A Twitter profile URL, for example, now looks like this:
http://twitter.com/#!/BoltClock
Does #! now play some special role in URLs, like for a certain Ajax framework or something since the new Facebook and Twitter interfaces are now largely Ajaxified?
Would using this in my URLs benefit my Web application in any way?
This technique is now deprecated.
This used to tell Google how to index the page.
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/
This technique has mostly been supplanted by the ability to use the JavaScript History API that was introduced alongside HTML5. For a URL like www.example.com/ajax.html#!key=value, Google will check the URL www.example.com/ajax.html?_escaped_fragment_=key=value to fetch a non-AJAX version of the contents.
The octothorpe/number-sign/hashmark has a special significance in an URL, it normally identifies the name of a section of a document. The precise term is that the text following the hash is the anchor portion of an URL. If you use Wikipedia, you will see that most pages have a table of contents and you can jump to sections within the document with an anchor, such as:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Early_computers_and_the_Turing_test
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing identifies the page and Early_computers_and_the_Turing_test is the anchor. The reason that Facebook and other Javascript-driven applications (like my own Wood & Stones) use anchors is that they want to make pages bookmarkable (as suggested by a comment on that answer) or support the back button without reloading the entire page from the server.
In order to support bookmarking and the back button, you need to change the URL. However, if you change the page portion (with something like window.location = 'http://raganwald.com';) to a different URL or without specifying an anchor, the browser will load the entire page from the URL. Try this in Firebug or Safari's Javascript console. Load http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald. Now in the Javascript console, type:
window.location = 'http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald';
You will see the page refresh from the server. Now type:
window.location = 'http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald#try_this';
Aha! No page refresh! Type:
window.location = 'http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald#and_this';
Still no refresh. Use the back button to see that these URLs are in the browser history. The browser notices that we are on the same page but just changing the anchor, so it doesn't reload. Thanks to this behaviour, we can have a single Javascript application that appears to the browser to be on one 'page' but to have many bookmarkable sections that respect the back button. The application must change the anchor when a user enters different 'states', and likewise if a user uses the back button or a bookmark or a link to load the application with an anchor included, the application must restore the appropriate state.
So there you have it: Anchors provide Javascript programmers with a mechanism for making bookmarkable, indexable, and back-button-friendly applications. This technique has a name: It is a Single Page Interface.
p.s. There is a fourth benefit to this technique: Loading page content through AJAX and then injecting it into the current DOM can be much faster than loading a new page. In addition to the speed increase, further tricks like loading certain portions in the background can be performed under the programmer's control.
p.p.s. Given all of that, the 'bang' or exclamation mark is a further hint to Google's web crawler that the exact same page can be loaded from the server at a slightly different URL. See Ajax Crawling. Another technique is to make each link point to a server-accessible URL and then use unobtrusive Javascript to change it into an SPI with an anchor.
Here's the key link again: The Single Page Interface Manifesto
First of all: I'm the author of the The Single Page Interface Manifesto cited by raganwald
As raganwald has explained very well, the most important aspect of the Single Page Interface (SPI) approach used in FaceBook and Twitter is the use of hash # in URLs
The character ! is added only for Google purposes, this notation is a Google "standard" for crawling web sites intensive on AJAX (in the extreme Single Page Interface web sites). When Google's crawler finds an URL with #! it knows that an alternative conventional URL exists providing the same page "state" but in this case on load time.
In spite of #! combination is very interesting for SEO, is only supported by Google (as far I know), with some JavaScript tricks you can build SPI web sites SEO compatible for any web crawler (Yahoo, Bing...).
The SPI Manifesto and demos do not use Google's format of ! in hashes, this notation could be easily added and SPI crawling could be even easier (UPDATE: now ! notation is used and remains compatible with other search engines).
Take a look to this tutorial, is an example of a simple ItsNat SPI site but you can pick some ideas for other frameworks, this example is SEO compatible for any web crawler.
The hard problem is to generate any (or selected) "AJAX page state" as plain HTML for SEO, in ItsNat is very easy and automatic, the same site is in the same time SPI or page based for SEO (or when JavaScript is disabled for accessibility). With other web frameworks you can ever follow the double site approach, one site is SPI based and another page based for SEO, for instance Twitter uses this "double site" technique.
I would be very careful if you are considering adopting this hashbang convention.
Once you hashbang, you can’t go back. This is probably the stickiest issue. Ben’s post put forward the point that when pushState is more widely adopted then we can leave hashbangs behind and return to traditional URLs. Well, fact is, you can’t. Earlier I stated that URLs are forever, they get indexed and archived and generally kept around. To add to that, cool URLs don’t change. We don’t want to disconnect ourselves from all the valuable links to our content. If you’ve implemented hashbang URLs at any point then want to change them without breaking links the only way you can do it is by running some JavaScript on the root document of your domain. Forever. It’s in no way temporary, you are stuck with it.
You really want to use pushState instead of hashbangs, because making your URLs ugly and possibly broken -- forever -- is a colossal and permanent downside to hashbangs.
To have a good follow-up about all this, Twitter - one of the pioneers of hashbang URL's and single-page-interface - admitted that the hashbang system was slow in the long run and that they have actually started reversing the decision and returning to old-school links.
Article about this is here.
I always assumed the ! just indicated that the hash fragment that followed corresponded to a URL, with ! taking the place of the site root or domain. It could be anything, in theory, but it seems the Google AJAX Crawling API likes it this way.
The hash, of course, just indicates that no real page reload is occurring, so yes, it’s for AJAX purposes. Edit: Raganwald does a lovely job explaining this in more detail.
I am creating a website and there is a page with people that are part of the company. Each person has an email that i want for the user to be able to get the email for the person that he/she want.
If we were in 2011 i would have used mailto: html tag. But really not so many people are using desktop email clients.
I thought about linking to a link so a new window would open in gmail and a new message would be created with recepient the pressed email. BUT not everyone uses gmail.
The only posible "solution" that i though that when the user clicks on the email this would be copied automatically in the clipboard. It would have the same result as doing CTRL & C at something. BUT this requires a lot of time and i dont want to get my hands dirty with javascript.
Is there any other way to do this ?
You should probably still use mailto:. mailto: is not intended for just desktops, it identifies a handler for the client. A mobile device would be able to recognize it just as well, and launch its preferred MTU.
With a lot of addons like smartaddon contact form and foxyform available out there, you could add them to your html code.
But, if you could use php, it to would just take few statements of code to set up the contact form on your own. Refer this post which explains clearly on how to set up your contact form using php.
So,
Imagine that I have this link:
Test
How do you deal with people that visit your site and don't have any email handler? What are the possible solutions? Like showing the email, for example? Any other solutions?
Thanks
EDIT: This solution requires you putting the email in between the anchor links. Why would you not?
I would not worry about it. Most browsers (all modern ones) would allow a user to right click and copy the email to their clipboard in the worst case. Its not such a mission critical feature that I would worry about it. If they do click it, I believe the browser will ask the user what mail client they would like to associatemailto links to.
The only other choice would to allow them to fill out a form that your mail server will generate into an email and then send to the appropriate recipients.
On mouse over it could show a tool tip above the link with the email?
If you don't want to be dependant on client settings, you ll need to provide the service server side. Meaning allow ppl to send an email from your site using some simple text box and a SMTP plugin.
You might find this question helpful: Has anyone ever come up with a way to detect the email program a recipient is using?
Essentially, there's no possible way to check if there's an outside program to handle email, so short of writing a submission forum that automatically sends the email to the intended recipient, there's probably not much you can do.