Automatically filling in a user's Subject, CC, BCC, and Body fields with a mailto: URL?
Several mail clients support "enhancing" your mailto: URLs with extra parameters:
- subject - sets the "subject" field
- cc - fills the "carbon copy" field
- bcc - fills the "blind carbon copy" field [useful if you don't want the other receivers to know who else the e-mail was sent to]
- body - fills in the "body" field
- from - fills in the "from" field [NOTE: This only worked with Eudora for me...since I didn't actually send my test, it may work with Outlook Express and Netscape Communicator as well, but it didn't appear to.]
Syntax: mailto:clark@earthdome.net?subject=Mars&body=Free US!
The easiest way to write your own "enhanced" mailto: URLs is to open your favorite text editor [Simpletext, Notepad, BBEdite, even Stickies!] and write out your message there. [Overlook the spelling mistake - "prisoners" - what did you expect from 23rd Century Martian half-breeds?]
Then Cut and Paste the URL into the URL Field in GoLive's Text Inspector.
Save your work. You're done! The link displays in my mail clients in the following manner:
Eudora Pro 4.0.2:
Outlook Express 4.5:
Netscape Communicator 4.5:
To see how this works with your mail client, click here. If you have a client in which it doesn't work, please email me and send me a screenshot. Also include which client [and version] you were using.
Note: Reader Robert Ameeti pointed out that for this to work in QuickMail Pro 1.5.3, the character that separates the body from the Subject must be "?", and not "&". This also works in Outlook Express 4.5 and Eudora Pro 4.0.2. However, in Communicator 4.5, whatever is in the body parameter gets appended to the subject tag instead. It's the designer's call, but I would rather make the link work fine with Communicator, Outlook, and Eudora than sacrifice Communicator support in order to make things work with QuickMail.
[04/28/99] - Reader Anders Fredenslund confirmed that this tutorial works with Claris Emailer 2.0.3, and sent in the screen shot below:
[08/13/99] - Reader Valmor sent in a screenshot of how this works in Outlook Express 5.0. As you can see, the subject is placed correctly but the body isn't:
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