What is the format of compose links to web mail clients such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and AOL?

Question

In my application, I'm currently using mailto: links to open email compose dialogs. This is terrible for web mail users, since it typically causes Outlook or Apple Mail to launch into their setup wizard.

Until I've implemented a separate compose widget, I'm planning to special case the mailto links for users with Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail/etc. addresses.

So far, I have the following compose link formats:

Gmail:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=TO&su=SUBJECT&body=BODY

Yahoo! Mail (from StackOverflow):

http://compose.mail.yahoo.com/?to=TO&subject=SUBJECT&body=BODY

[Hotmail] (from StackOverflow)::

http://mail.live.com/mail/EditMessageLight.aspx?n=&to=TO&cc=CC&subject=SUBJECTt&body=BODY

Two questions:

• What's the correct format for AOL links?
• What other web mail clients should I support, and what format do they use?

Overdraw

The mail.live.com link no longer works. Microsoft appears to have broken it and not published any update. There is a question on webapps asking if anybody can find a new URL: Hotmail/Live.com mailto: URL no longer working. Is there a new format? – Aufmann

Answer 1

Some searching led to this as the proper format for AOL Mail links:
http://webmail.aol.com/Mail/ComposeMessage.aspx?to=TO&subject=SUBJECT&body=BODY&cc=CC&bcc=BCC

Source: http://dev.aol.com/api/openmail/webmail (under 'External Invocation of Web Mail'), and some Google searching to find the parameters.

Once you have these 4 covered, I think you've got essentially all of the webmail clients covered.

Pedagogue

Answer 2

Regarding which other web mail clients to support it depends a lot on the users. In Germany for example you should add GMX and web.de to the list.

Ozan

Hey @freyfogle, I wanted to add support for both GMX and web.de. Any chance you have the correct url for these 2? – Soemba

Answer 3

The example google URL above returns a google error.

The February 2014 post to thread 2583928 recommends replacing view=cm&fs=1&tf=1 with &v=b&cs=wh

Germicide

Answer 4

Try these updated ones

For outlook

https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/deeplink/[email protected]

For AOL

https://mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-us/[email protected]

But I should warn you that, prefilled body if at all contains line feed(new line) character encoded in URL, that line feed won't take effect at present.

Avellaneda