Re: Emails for pwld

Hi,

In article <sfd9a547.080@mailsrv.mencap.org.uk>, Caroline Lambie wrote:
> The idea is instead of having a traditional email address there is a
> photo of the person you need to email and when you click on that the
> email address is embedded so it opens up as a traditional email ready to
> write and send. It would be be reciprocal so that it also shows the
> senders photo when received.

Unfortunately you are likely to run into problems.

Firstly, you cannot rely on people's systems being configured correctly so 
that clicking a mailto: link automatically launches their email software - 
I am continually surprised at how many systems cannot do this.

Also, using mailto: links also opens you up to problems with Spammers 
harvesting the email addresses.

The safest alternative is to use a contact form that uses scripting on the 
server to send out the emails - the form could be launched from a person's 
picture acting as a link to the form.

I think it is possible to get email software to display photos of 
recipients, however they will have to have a copy of the photo on their 
system already.

An alternative is to send the photo to the user either as a straight 
attachment or to send the email as a html formatted email either with the 
photo embedded in it or with a link to the photo, however with the 
security being tightened up with most email programs many of them will not 
automatically display the photos, displaying placeholders instead.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

Julian Voelcker
The Virtual World (UK) Limited
T. +44(0)1285 821 910
M. +44(0)7971 540 362

Received on Friday, 12 December 2003 08:09:54 UTC