Subect setting in Mailto:

[John Baker]

HI;

Quick question: How do I specify an email subject when using the setup

<a href="mailto:do**@cats.com">Mail to the cat</a>

Can someone show me how it would look if the subject was "mice"?

Thanks a lot

John Baker

[Stephan Bird]

In article <<ev********************************@4ax.com>,> John
Baker (Ba******@Verizon.net) says...

HI;

Quick question: How do I specify an email subject when using the setup

<a href="mailto:do**@cats.com">Mail to the cat</a>

Can someone show me how it would look if the subject was "mice"?

It can't be done, at least not reliably; short of putting together
a FormMail-type script.

Stephan
--
Stephan Bird MChem(Hons) AMRSC
Currently in Caernarfon, Wales

[John Baker]

Stephan:

How about unreliably, or alternativley, how would a script work that would give me the
same result with the message name?

Best

John

Stephan Bird <st************@mad.scientist.comREMOVE> wrote:

In article <<ev********************************@4ax.com>,> John
Baker (Ba******@Verizon.net) says...

HI;

Quick question: How do I specify an email subject when using the setup

<a href="mailto:do**@cats.com">Mail to the cat</a>

Can someone show me how it would look if the subject was "mice"?

It can't be done, at least not reliably; short of putting together
a FormMail-type script.

Stephan

[Philip Ronan]

"Stephan Bird" wrote:

In article <<ev********************************@4ax.com>,> John
Baker (Ba******@Verizon.net) says...

Quick question: How do I specify an email subject when using the setup

<a href="mailto:do**@cats.com">Mail to the cat</a>

Can someone show me how it would look if the subject was "mice"?

It can't be done, at least not reliably; short of putting together
a FormMail-type script.

Huh? What's unreliable about this?

<a href="mailto:do**@cats.com?subject=mice">Mail to the cat</a>

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/

[Mark Parnell]

Previously in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Philip Ronan
<in*****@invalid.invalid> said:

Huh? What's unreliable about this?

<a href="mailto:do**@cats.com?subject=mice">Mail to the cat</a>

It's really no less reliable than a plain mailto: link - i.e. if your
visitor doesn't have an email program installed/configured, it won't
work.

My objection to the above is that the person sending the email is much
more likely to know what they want to email you about than the person
developing the site. It's arrogant IMHO to assume that everyone who
follows that link wants to email you about the same thing.

--
Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au

[Philip Ronan]

"Mark Parnell" wrote:

Previously in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Philip Ronan
<in*****@invalid.invalid> said:

<a href="mailto:do**@cats.com?subject=mice">Mail to the cat</a>

It's arrogant IMHO to assume that everyone who
follows that link wants to email you about the same thing.

You get a "Huh?" too.

Please explain what's so arrogant about these examples:

<a href="mailto:[e-mail]?subject=Link%20Exchang e">Contact me if you
want to exchange links with this website</a>

<a href="mailto:[e-mail]?s********************* **@example.com">
Unsubscribe</a>

<a href="mailto:[e-mail]?subject=Quote%20reques t">Email me to request
a quote</a>

Mail sent using these links could be easily siphoned off to separate
folders, making life much easier for the site operator and probably
resulting in a quicker response to the sender.

What's wrong with that?

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/

[Mark Parnell]

Previously in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Philip Ronan
<in*****@invalid.invalid> said:

"Mark Parnell" wrote:

Previously in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Philip Ronan
<in*****@invalid.invalid> said:

<a href="mailto:do**@cats.com?subject=mice">Mail to the cat</a>
It's arrogant IMHO to assume that everyone who
follows that link wants to email you about the same thing.

<snip> <a href="mailto:[e-mail]?subject=Link%20Exchang e">Contact me if you
want to exchange links with this website</a> <snip other examples> What's wrong with that?

Those particular examples aren't so bad, as the link mentions one
specific reason for emailing. The original link above assumes though
that everyone who wants to send "Mail to the cat" wants it to be about
mice. Most email links on web sites are like that - just a simple
"Contact Me", rather than "Contact Me about blah".

--
Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au

[Philip Ronan]

"Mark Parnell" wrote:

The original link above assumes though that everyone who wants to
send "Mail to the cat" wants it to be about mice.

Oooh, how impudent! :-D

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/

[John Baker]

Just to clarify:

I have a web site where people sign up for various events, but the actual e-mails go to
only three people. They need the name associated with the button click because there may
be one of a dozen events involved. If the event is about mice (and the button says "Click
here to sign up for the event about mice"), they want the subject to say mice, and if the
event is about rats they want it to say rats. That way they can easily categorize the
e-mail (automatically) and respond to it.

Best

John

Philip Ronan <in*****@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Mark Parnell" wrote:

The original link above assumes though that everyone who wants to
send "Mail to the cat" wants it to be about mice.

Oooh, how impudent! :-D

[Philip Ronan]

"John Baker" wrote:

Just to clarify:

I have a web site where people sign up for various events, but the actual
e-mails go to
only three people. They need the name associated with the button click because
there may
be one of a dozen events involved. If the event is about mice (and the button
says "Click
here to sign up for the event about mice"), they want the subject to say mice,
and if the
event is about rats they want it to say rats. That way they can easily
categorize the
e-mail (automatically) and respond to it.

That's fine.

Just remember to *escape* the subject line, otherwise the links won't work
(i.e. "...?subject=Hello%2C%20World%21", not "...?subject=Hello, World!").

There's a favelet that can do this for you. Just create a new shortcut
button in your browser's toolbar and copy this link into it (without the
line breaks, obviously):

javascript:void(prompt('Here%20is%20the%20converte d%20text.%20You%20can%20co
py%20this%20into%20your%20mailto%20link:',escape(p rompt('This%20tool%20makes
%20text%20safe%20for%20inclusion%20in%20mailto%20U RIs.%20Enter%20the%20subje
ct%20line%20here:'))))

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/

[Adrienne]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed John Baker <Ba******@Verizon.net>
writing in news:n9********************************@4ax.com:

Please do not top post ...

Philip Ronan <in*****@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Mark Parnell" wrote:

The original link above assumes though that everyone who wants to
send "Mail to the cat" wants it to be about mice.

Oooh, how impudent! :-D

Just to clarify:

I have a web site where people sign up for various events, but the
actual e-mails go to only three people. They need the name associated
with the button click because there may be one of a dozen events
involved. If the event is about mice (and the button says "Click here
to sign up for the event about mice"), they want the subject to say
mice, and if the event is about rats they want it to say rats. That way
they can easily categorize the e-mail (automatically) and respond to
it.

Best

John

As previously mentioned, this sort of link is unreliable for several
reasons:
1. If the user does not have an email client, web based email users, users
at an Internet Cafe or library, at someone else's computer, etc.
2. The user can still change the subject of the email. You may have set
the subject to "mice", and the user can change it to "men". Now the
recipient has to futz with it.
3. Some email clients don't recognize that form of mailto, and skip the
subject all together.

You're better off doing it server side.
--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

[Philip Ronan]

"Adrienne" wrote:

As previously mentioned, this sort of link is unreliable for several
reasons:
1. If the user does not have an email client, web based email users, users
at an Internet Cafe or library, at someone else's computer, etc.
That's totally irrelevant. The OP wanted to know how to add a subject line
to a mailto URI. If you must go on about the evils of mailto links, please
do it in another thread.
2. The user can still change the subject of the email. You may have set
the subject to "mice", and the user can change it to "men". Now the
recipient has to futz with it.
Indeed. And with an ordinary mailto link, the user could edit the email
address and cause the email to be sent somewhere else altogether. But so
what?
3. Some email clients don't recognize that form of mailto, and skip the
subject all together.

Can you back this up? I think probably not. Subject fields in mailto URIs
were already in use long before rfc2368 came out

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/

[Chris Sharman]

Adrienne wrote:

3. Some email clients don't recognize that form of mailto, and skip the
subject all together.

You're better off doing it server side.

I've heard this alleged on several occasions, but I've never discovered
any browser/email client combinations which fail with ?subject= and
succeed without.

Is it a historical Netscape 2 kind of thing?

Can anyone furnish a list of email clients and/or browsers which exhibit
this behaviour ?

Similarly for ?body=blah or ?subject=what&body=that%20page ?
I've seen claims that there's a limit of 256 characters, and that
newlines (even escaped) aren't always well handled, but there's (as
ever) a lot of rubbish written, and I'd quite like to see an
authoritative statement on what issues exist around use of
mailto:...?subject=
That's both real world issues and specification issues.

And html links (<a href="mailto:...">) shouldn't be confused with html
form actions, where several browsers (anyone got a list) support mailto
in some way, but the spec doesn't.

Thanks
Chris

[L�ʻie Techie]

On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 19:35:13 +0000, John Baker wrote:

HI;

Quick question: How do I specify an email subject when using the setup

<a href="mailto:do**@cats.com">Mail to the cat</a>
Quick question: Whose bright idea is it to have the cat's email address
be do**@cats.com ?
Can someone show me how it would look if the subject was "mice"?

Thanks a lot

John Baker

If you have access to the server, I would create mail aliases which
automatically get forwarded to the people interested in that event. For
example, have mo*******@yourdomain.com for any correspondence about mouse
races.

aloha,
La'ie Techie