Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / JavaScript / December 2004

Give up now and save yourself a lot of grief.

Nope, that doesn't work.

Submit a form, let the server send the email

 Randy is trying to say that this is very unreliable, as the user may
 not have an email client configured, or it may not support all the
 features of mailto.

 For example, Lotus Notes will not accept a body of more than 200
 characters, so whilst you may get away with this on a controlled
 intranet, you should not use it on the web.

 The following works with Lotus Notes based on the principle of escaping
 the text (%0A is a return):

 <a href='mailto:rob@myemail.com?SUBJECT=E-mail with broken
  lines&body=Here%20is%20a%20line%20with%0Aa%20break'>Click
  here to send...</a>

 An alternative using \n and the escape function (you can use \r too if
 that suits better):

 <a href='' onclick="
  this.href='mailto:rob@myemail.com?SUBJECT=E-mailform&body='
            + escape('This is\na broken\nline');
  ">Click here to send...</a>

 As noted, only lightly tested and certainly not considered suitable for
 the web for the stated reasons.

 Cheers, Rob.

TJO wrote on 23 nov 2004 in comp.lang.javascript:

Sure you can do that with serverside javascript.

But my guess is that you mean clientside in a browser.

Since the browsers in this world don't have a standard email client
connected, the only and very unreliable way is to use "mailto:' linking.

Advice: don't!

Well boys and girls. I used the following script and tag
combo and I have not seen it not work yet.

Here is the tag:
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"
src="mailtosupport.js"></script>

This is the content of the mailtosupport.js file:
<!-- Begin
sendto = "myemail@atbigcompany.com";
subject = "Support Request";
lf = escape('\r');
tab = escape('\t')

body =  "Thank you for taking the time to notify us with an issue." + lf +
lf;
body += "If you have found an error in our system, please, to the best of
your ability answer the following questions." + lf + lf;
body += "Otherwise simply erase the following content and write you own.";
body += lf + lf + lf;
body += "1)" + tab + "Please describe the error, issue, or request:" + lf +
lf + lf;
body += "2)" + tab + "Please describe the time of day the issue occurred:" +
lf + tab + " The current Time is: " +  Date() + lf + lf + lf;
body += "3)" + tab + "Please describe what you expected to occur:" + lf + lf
+ lf + lf;

document.write(
'<a href=\"mailto:'
 + sendto
 + '?subject='
 + subject
 + '&body='
 + body
 + '\">');
document.write('Email Support'+'</a>');
End -->