mailto: a syntax question

[tedster]

I've just become aware that adding subject and/or body information to a "mailto:" URL may be problematic. I have one site that uses this a lot -- URLs like:
<a href="mailto:[e-mail]?subject="Seminar Information">contact us</a>

They do this because they are guaranteed an accurate email address, which is not true with a CGI form. But now I understand that some mail clients may misfire on this code.

Does anyone have the scoop on the risks and tradeoffs here?

[Brett_Tabke]

From what I have seen, IE/NN 4-5-6 and Opera 5 work across the board on all platforms. Opera 3 doesn't.

[gmiller]

As I recall, this was a Netscape extension, so some browsers may interpret the subject as part of the email address, causing all sorts of entertaining behavior. It's pretty widely supported these days, though.

[Xoc]

Tedster-

Nothing is going to accept:

<a href="mailto:[e-mail]?subject="Seminar Information">contact us</a>

There is one too many double quote marks in there. You will also need to encode the space as well as the quote marks.

[tedster]

You're right -- I typed too fast. The quote before the word Seminar shouldn't be there.

However, the space hasn't been giving us any problems that I know of. What should I be doing?

[Xoc]

Using a %20 for the space is required. For the full spec of the mailto url, see [ietf.org...]

This is the RFC (request for comment) that details the spec for it.

Since it is a RFC, it is not a Netscape thing, but an Internet standard. Tools that understand URLs are supposed to understand this syntax.

Edited by: Xoc

[tedster]

Thanks for the resource, and thanks for the input. I really appreciate it.