- From: Ann Navarro <ann@webgeek.com>
- Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 09:25:04 -0500
- To: "Inanis Brooke" <alatus@earthlink.net>, "www-html" <www-html@w3.org>
At 07:35 PM 1/20/99 -0800, Inanis Brooke wrote: > but how software >interprets the mailto tag, (i.e. which mail program it opens, what that mail >program does, etc.) is determined, at least on win32, by the registry. Correct -- it's all in what email client currently holds the "default email client" setting in the registry, IF such a setting exists (various actions can unselect such settings, or move them around). >if they're 'net literate enough, they'll still be able >to e-mail me, and if they're that 'net literate, I most certainly welcome a >friendly message in my mailbox! True, however, since these mailto schemes are being used for both forms and simple links, and most users (and web sites that use them for forms) don't know the difference, you end up with quite a few broken forms. The casual surfer won't have a clue that their form response didn't get sent -- or sits and wonders why their email program just popped up with a blank message in it -- not connecting this to a failure in the mailto action. While I'm not trying to turn this into an anti-mailto rant, it's fairly obvious that they're not a good solution for forms. Adding complexity to them will make them even "more" broken for forms than they already are -- and break fairly traditional usage as a simple link. All in all, bad idea. Ann --- Author of Effective Web Design: Master the Essentials Buy it online! http://www.webgeek.com/about.html Owner, WebGeek Communications http://www.webgeek.com Vice President-Finance, HTML Writers Guild http://www.hwg.org
Received on Thursday, 21 January 1999 09:29:52 UTC