html FORM with mailto:

I have designed a form to send me feedback from users - it's very simple but serves what I need.

Anyhow, I am not allowed to use cgi scripts on the server - so I am trying to use the following command:

<form method="post" enctype="text/plain" action="mailto:av46atdrexel.edu?subject=Feedback from Making the Most of Santiago" >

From Firefox, this seems to work ok with either Eudora or Outlook. From IE, the subject and e-mail address work, but the body of the e-mail is not filled out.
Is this a limitation of IE, or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for any insight!
alisen

 

Being fairly new to forms, I cannot give you a perfectly accuate answer. But my answer would be, maybe part of both.

I had a basic html form and had lots of trouble with different browsers treating it differently. IE seemed to be the most friendly, while netscape sent the data in a file which had to be downloaded and parsed.

I gave up and searched for a cgi script and after a couple of days I finally got one working like I needed. I will now advance to php for more interactive scripting. I found a real budget hosting plan with cgi at seanic.net.
An even better deal with php 4.something and mysql (no cgi) at godaddy.com

My cgi form
my html form

Check the source codes. But I like the fact that I get a thankyou page displayed after you hit submit with the cgi.

 

Yeah that method of sending an email from a web page heavily relies on the browser looking at the right fields and "knowing" to send them. IE is awful for that. It probably has its own personal agenda with emails from forms that we don't know about.

I'd go with somthing PHP or ASP (or CGI if you feel like torturing yourself), or simply not bother with the body part.

Whenever I code, its ALWAYS IE that gives me problems. Thats because I code standards compliant, and IE has a funny way of inturpreting HTML/XHTML/CSS. CSS is particularly bad, changing the order of two seemingly irrelevant style rules completley changes the output. Hmmm...

 

Thank you for the replies. I will look into other options.

This page is part of a graduate course I am taking - actually, it's the output of the course - so part of it is using the form with mailto: But that doesn't mean that I cannot add something better (read "actually works") for my own knowledge.

I agree that IE seems to do some odd stuff when I try to be compliant. Right now we are using XHTML 1.0 Transitional and at this moment, everthing is compliant. Sadly I found out that doesn't automatically mean that everything works as planned. But I am learning, and it is a lot more rewarding than the page I did a long time ago with FrontPage!

The professor says he will grade the pages using IE 6.0 and 1024x768 resolution, and that's all we need to code for. But I think it's silly to waste time making a page that isn't at least attempting to please other browsers, too. Don't want to form bad habits so early

Thanks again,
- Alisen

~You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.
Monty Python skit

 

When I sent the form in html it was from a mac with ie 5.1. It displayed perfectly on the windows xp receiving machine. So I changed the mailto to a hotmail account and checked and was still ok. But when I filled it out on a win 98 machine with ie or netscape it sent the file as a separate attachment that had to be downloaded and opened with note pad. I believe it (form) was just w3c or wd40 standard


But the same form would not even send from another friends machine, which I do not even know the OS.

If you want to post the url for the form, I can send it from a few different os if you want to check.

 

OK - here is the url (please be kind - I'm just learning)

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~av46/feedback.html

I will be away for a few days, so if you send anything helpful and I don't reply, it's not that I am ignoring you Thanks so much in advance for any comments or suggestions.

Alisen

~You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.
Monty Python skit

 

OK sent off the forms from Imac running os9 using ie 5.1 and netscape 4.7. I'll try later with another mac using netscape 7.1 and windows with IE 5.5.

The page displayed nice on IE but looked rather missing things in netscape. The nav background didn't display- blah blah blah. hehehe

So thats what xhtml code looks like? </p> ? <div>?

I just learned tables so this<div> is strange.

So it looks like you want the horizontal rule in under the nav bar right? In IE there is a blue stripe (background color)under the image but inside the border

Maybe I should be using an xtlmh plumb client browser eh?
I just really like the features of my older browsers. netscape 7 is ok but is troubles some at times.

 

Alisen, I have some mail returned because of a bad recipient email address. Seems the "at" will need to be "@" in your mailto: code on the page.

I sent off a bunch of emails with the different OS's etc in the name should you receive any of them.

 

So sending from a Netscape 7.1 (mac) did not work. I filled out the form and hit send, and my mail compose window opend, with address and subject but no body. I filled in the body and hit send and it came back to me.

Hope this helps unravel the troubles.