HTML questions ? (fwd)

Once upon a time Eugene Venter shaped the electrons to say...
>There seems to be a lack of information on the "MAILTO" tag for HTML.

It is a dead simple tag, there shouldn't be much info needed for it.

>Yes, what I mean is that I cannot find any more detailed information on
>how to finetune this nice tag.

There is no finetuning.

<A HREF="mailto:address@machine.dom">link</A>

Right now that is it.

>One of the things I would like to do is to have a hypertext link for our
>internal users to click on with a MAILTO tag. The address that they will
>be sending to (destination email addr.) must not be seen or must be
>UNKNOWN to them.

>Q.1 - How can I achieve this in HTML ?
>Any ideas ?

Can't be done in HTML.  All the user needs to do is look at the source, and
all the browsers I've seen show the address in the mailer window when it 
opens.

>Q.2 - What about an email ALIAS on SMTP ?
>Maybe then I can send to the ALIAS with the MAILTO tag and the users
>would not be able to pick up the destination addr. at all !!

This is what we do.  And since the server runs outside the firewall, AFAIK
you can't expand the alias by telnetting to the SMTP port.  The expansion
is done inside the firewall.  In any case, only an experiece hack is going
to know how to telnet to port 25 and get the alias expanded.  It isn't 
exactly common knowledge for users.

>Q.3 - What about FORMS ?
>I'm using a custom CGI forms proceesing engine on Windows-NT/95 and
>would like to know if forms can solve this issue for me.

Sure.  If the CGI is what sends the mail, the address need not appear 
anywhere on the page and the user never knows where it goes.  The only info
they have is the CGI URL, which doesn't tell them where the mail goes.  This
is, AFAIK, the most secure method ot hiding the destination.

>Q.4 - Can the VALUE attribute be used with the MAILTO tag ?
>For example : I would like to fill in a predetermined SUBJECT when the
>MAILTO tag is used in Netscape.
>The Value attribute woks well with forms I've seen.

No, there is no standard way to set the subject at this time.  There is a
hack for NS, but it completely breaks the mail on other browsers, so don't
bother looking at that.

SOME browsers will honor the TITLE attribute:
<A HREF="mailto:address" TITLE="My subject">

TITLE is defined for the upcoming Cougar draft, normally the text in title
will be shown in the status bar of the user agent.  I believe Lynx 2.5 
supports this subject system, and a few other fringe browsers.  I encourage
people to write to MS and NS to ask them to support it.

-MZ
--
Livingston Enterprises - Chair, Department of Interstitial Affairs
Phone: 800-458-9966 510-426-0770 FAX: 510-426-8951 megazone@livingston.com
For support requests: support@livingston.com  <http://www.livingston.com/> 
Snail mail: 6920 Koll Center Parkway  #220, Pleasanton, CA 94566
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Received on Monday, 9 September 1996 17:19:50 UTC