What does `mailto:` do when there is no email client?

Question

I am developing a website.

What does mailto: open in if there is no email client (like Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.)? It works on my computer, which has Outlook, but what if one wants mailto: to open in, say, gmail.com?

What do I need to put in the mailto: statement for that to happen?

Cathouse

As far as I know mailto only opens those clients on the guest OS. If there is none, it doesn't work. There are some (chrome) plugins to make gmail your "default mail client". I fix this by creating a (php) from on my site and sending it that way. – Hambletonian

I don't think it would work. I suggest having a form instead with Ajax. – Caseous

Answer 1

As a web developer you don't have any control over the software that a user chooses to open their email, since it's handled by that user's web browser settings, or the OS. If a user has no email program installed on their machine and no operation defined for "mailto" links in their browser, nothing would happen.

Enrika

Answer 2

The following solution works for me:

(function($)) {
  $('a[href^=mailto]').each(function() {
    var href = $(this).attr('href');
    $(this).click(function() {
      var t;
      var self = $(this);

      $(window).blur(function() {
        // The browser apparently responded, so stop the timeout.
        clearTimeout(t);
      });

      t = setTimeout(function() {
        // The browser did not respond after 500ms, so open an alternative URL.
        document.location.href = '...';
      }, 500);
    });
  });
})(jQuery);

For more info see: https://www.uncinc.nl/articles/dealing-with-mailto-links-if-no-mail-client-is-available

Papillose

Answer 3

I believe you can use this. https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&[email protected] This however does have its flaws in which the user must be already signed into gmail. Hope this helps!

Morley

Assuming that the user is logged in to (or even uses a) gmail account is, I would say, even worse than assuming they have their own mail client set up. – Aviv

Answer 4

What happens is entirely up to the client. The OS defines protocol handlers for protocols like mailto: or tel:, etc.

You would need access to the client's registry (in case of a Windows system) to manipulate the handling application for your protocol handler.

For Outlook 2013 as the designated handler, the according Registry structure looks like this:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto]
@="URL:mailto"
"EditFlags"=hex:02,00,00,00
"URL Protocol"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\\PROGRA~2\\MICROS~1\\Office15\\OUTLOOK.EXE,-9403"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell]
@="open"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\PROGRA~2\\MICROS~1\\Office15\\OUTLOOK.EXE\" -c IPM.Note /mailto \"%1\""

with a corresponding structure under HKCU.

Angling

Answer 5

The mailto URI scheme doesn't decide what happens-- it simply instructs the browser you're using to do whatever it's been configured to do to send e-mails (see the IETF proposed standard for more info). Therefore, you'll have to consult the browser itself to see what it does if no e-mail client is configured.

According to the documentation and to my personal experience, I don't see any way of manually setting an action: It might be possible with certain browsers with some non-standard syntax, but this is unlikely since this would open up a huge potential security problem by being able to execute an arbitrary command by click (such as downloading a virus or something like that).

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