Why I hate the mailto: link

[giza]

I just got off the phone with my TLA-impaired mother. She was having computer problems with her Mac. The main complaint was along the lines of, "I'm trying to go to my old high school's website, and when I click on some links it asks for a password and mailserver!"

After going back and forth with her for a few minutes, I realized what was happening. She was clicking on mailto: links. And since she uses Hotmail and not any sort of local mail client, it was bringing up the configuration dialogs.

Attention webmasters: mailto links are EVIL. They work in different ways on different systems. Use plaintext e-mail addresses or feedback/contact forms instead.

Now that I think of it, it would sure be nice if Firefox had a configuration option where you could choose what to do when a mailto: link is clicked. For bonus points, integration with Gmail/Hotmail/whatever would really rock my world.

Comments

[tesfox.livejournal.com]

...

I use Firefox & Thunderbird & gmail...

I click a mailto, it pops up with a new thunderbird message, and sends it via gmail.

I see no problem... lol ^.^ just my $0.02

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

A little searching showed up a Mozilla/Firefox extension called WebMailCompose.

I hate feedback forms, because they don't leave tracking in my outbox.

And putting up an address without making it also a link is as smart as putting an elevator next to the stairs...and leaving off the button.

Comments? Mail me.

[giza.livejournal.com]

That extension is farking beautiful! Thanks for the hookup!

[skippyfox.livejournal.com]

Agreed with rustitobuck.

Mailto links are NOT evil. They are good. Very, very good. Just because your relatives have to copy/paste doesn't mean I have to also.

By the way, you can set up Outlook to communicate with her Hotmail account.

[giza.livejournal.com]

> Just because your relatives have to copy/paste doesn't mean I have to also.

But what happens when the link is something like this (mailto:doug.muthATgmailDOTcom)? In this example, it's not clear that one needs to copy and paste. All the end user knows is that they clicked on it and something bad happened. That's just a bad user interface. And it's not like this problem is new, either.

> By the way, you can set up Outlook to communicate with her Hotmail account.

She is on a Mac, so I'm not even sure if Outlook is available. And if it were, well... I think you know my feelings toward Microsoft. I'm not going to inflict one of their products on my mother.

[triggur.livejournal.com]

the whole point of providing a mailto: link is to make it easy for people to contact you. obfuscating the address at the same time is-- a tetch below genius.

[skippyfox.livejournal.com]

Like Hotmail?

[skippyfox.livejournal.com]

Also, your example mailto link does not need to be copy/pasted with Outlook. The address appears in the subject line and it's quite obvious the AT and DOT need to be replaced with their corresponding characters. Doing so is easily done with a couple of click-drags and keypresses.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that Apple's mail client would do the same thing on my Mom's machine, if it were properly configured.

But that's the whole point of my little rant. I don't like that the assumption is made by web browsers is that you have a working mail client on your machine. Case in point, I have two computers at the office. One of them has an e-mail client which I read corporate e-mail on, the other does not.

I think that the extension that rustitobuck mentioned goes a long way in fixing this problem. Now my non-email-enabled computer goes straight to my Gmail account when I click on a mailto: link.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Gah, don't even get me started. I've been trying to get my Mom to move over to Gmail for quite some time now.

In Hotmail's defense, though, they have far less than the average amount of evil that is present in Microsoft. They squash spammers, they don't send spam, they don't have a new security hole found every freakin' week, so on and so forth. Probably something to do with the original backend being BSD-based.

[silver-huskey.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to disable my own mailto links (and mangle my email address). I've been getting spam in my inbox left and right. =/

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

It seems odd to blame the website because a particular browser doesn't handle proper HTML correctly.

[giza.livejournal.com]

The browser (Firefox) is doing what it's supposed to.

I just think that the whole mailto: thing is a bad idea for the reasons I outlined above.

[furahi.livejournal.com]

not to mention spam

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Won't it be fun when spammers start using contact forms to spam you?

[music4fun.livejournal.com]

The Mac works just fine. It's obviously the person at the keyboard.

[akakaryuu.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* I would say having both options is best.

[rorydedog.livejournal.com]

YAY!
Thank you, I've always felt the same way.

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Actually that does sound like a good idea, there must be a place where you can suggest this, no? o.o

I think IE does something like this, particularly for Hotmail, but I could be wrong.