Super Mailtos
HTML
Mailtos are a convenient way to let your audience
offer feedback on your Web site or to arrange other contact information.
But you can do a lot more with a mailto than just automatically generate
an email message. Super Mailtos can automatically CC: and BCC: people--or
even fill in the subject line. Here's how to customize your
mailto functions.
Your basic mailto looks like this:
<A href="mailto:ImWebLover@aol.com">
Click here to send a boring old mailto message</a>.
When users click the link, it brings up their email client with the recipient's email address prepopulated in the To: field. To spice it up, follow these steps.
Step One
Create your regular mailto
with the main recipient's email address, as you normally would.
Step Two
To copy (CC:)
someone on the email, follow the To:
recipient's email address with ?cc=.
The example below shows how the code should look:
<A
href="mailto:ImWebLover@aol.com?cc=imweblover@aol.com">
Click here to send an email message to multiple recipients</a>.
Step Three
To blind copy (BCC:)
someone on the email, follow the CC: recipient's email address with
&bcc= (as you add these features, the first one begins with
a ? and subsequent ones begin
with a &). It should look
something like this:
<A
href="mailto:ImWebLover@aol.com?cc=imweblover@aol.com&bcc=TheWebDeZiner@aol.com">
Click here to send an email message to multiple recipients (only some
of which you know about)</a>.
You can also separate numerous To:, CC:, and BCC: recipients by commas:
<A
href="mailto:ImWebLover@aol.com, imweblover@aol.com">
Click here to send an email message to multiple comma-delimited recipients.</a>
Step Four
To prepopulate the Subject:
field, follow steps 1 and 2 with &subject=.
For spaces, use the escaped version, %20. The whole string--with
To:, CC:,
BCC:, and Subject:--should
look like this:
<a
href="mailto:ImWebLover@aol.com?cc=imweblover@aol.com&bcc=TheWebDeZiner@aol.com&subject=
Hi%20Bobbye">Click here to send your super email</a>.
Here's an example of the whole thing in action: Click here to send me super email. Note: this trick only works with standards compliant email clients.
