One of the most common methods of providing immediate user feedback is by using
mailto: URLs within anchor tags. Instead of the anchor tag’s value being a file name or
URL, it begins with mailto: and is immediately followed by the recipient e-mail address.
<a href="mailto:someone@your.domain">Click to email!</a>
It’s possible to take this technique further. You can define multiple recipients by using a
comma-separated list, and by placing a question mark immediately after the final recipient
address, you can add further parameters, such as a subject and recipients to carbon copy
(cc) and blind carbon copy (bcc). If using more than one parameter, you must separate
them with encoded ampersands (&). Note that spaces within the subject should also
be encoded (as %20).
<a href="mailto:someone@your.domain,someoneelse@your.domain?subject=
åContact%20from%20website&cc=bigboss@your.domain">Click
å to email!</a>
Although this may sound great, there are several problems with such a system. First, e-mail
addresses online are often harvested by spambots. Second, a mailto: link relies on the
user having a preconfigured e-mail client ready to go—something that people working on
college and library machines most likely won’t have. Third, not all browsers support the
range of options explained earlier.A way to combat the spambots is presented in the next section. For the second issue (the
mailto: link’s reliance on a preconfigured mail client), I recommend using forms for any
complex website feedback, which we will come to later on in this chapter. For the third
issue (browser support for the more advanced mailto: options), I recommend just keeping
things simple. Place your e-mail address online as a mailto: and enable the user to fill
in any other details, such common as the subject line
No comments:
Post a Comment