7 ms·

This is supposed to be the sane way? Certainly not! You guys know that you can use "mailto:" as form action, yes? No backend stuff needed.

voytec 2y ago
> You guys know that you can use "mailto:" as form action, yes? Author mentions "a form with file upload capability".
pspeter3 2y ago
I had no idea that you could use the mailto: URL for a form action.
- thih9 2y ago
  Same. How would that work? What would be the end result (email body)?
  - throwup238 2y ago
    Email body is in the “body” form field, subject line in “subject”, destination in “email”. https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-create-mailto-forms.html https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-create-mailto-fo...
    - bdcravens 2y ago
      Those parameters need to be passed in the mailto: URL, not the form, if the FORM is a POST mailto:example@gmail.com?subject=About+your+extended+warranty
  - bdcravens 2y ago
    It passes all form fields in URL encoded format in the body (example, name=Billy+Cravens&state=TX)
    - GrantMoyer 2y ago
      Looks like it can also be plaintext encoded[1], so something like: name=Billy%20Cravens state=TX [1]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastructure.html#submit-mailto-body https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastr...
    - codetrotter 2y ago
      Sounds like a really bad UX I think if my mom was trying to submit a form, and it opened her email client with a body consisting of URL encoded data she’d probably just close the email client thinking that something went wrong. Then she’d try again and the same thing would happen again. Then she might call me, and I’d probably tell her to just forget about it and try to call them on the phone instead or give up and try another company instead.
      - vaylian 2y ago
        > with a body consisting of URL encoded data The e-mail client decodes the URL encoded data. So you actually see plain text. The encoding is only done for the purpose of passing the data from the browser to the e-mail client.
        codetrotter 2y ago
        I created a form with a dropdown and a some other inputs. The result when using enctype=application/x-www-form-urlencoded and method=post in the form html is that the body that is shown in my email client is URL encoded. They have a different enc type that you could use to specifically make it plain text. That one is not recommended because then you're gonna have a bad time parsing out the fields that were submitted from the form.
        codetrotter 2y ago
        And for reference, here is what the mail body looks like with enctype=text/plain and method=post when it is opened in iCloud mail ready to send cat=services btext=adsfasdfsdafsdf afsdfas asd fa sdf as dfs subscribe-newsletter-weekly-yes=yes Other email clients might create different looking body for text/plain enc type.
  - ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
    You see that in the "email" forms of for example most "contact" sites. Like, for example, here on HN, in the right end of the site's footer (on desktop), by clicking "Contact" (but this isn't a form, just a "mailto:..." link).
- arnorhs 2y ago
  this was something that was more commonly used in the late 90s/early/2000s, an early internet feature, but still works to this day. there are some niceties that have been added or maybe they were always possible - you can add a subject and message body, possibly cc etc. i used it just last year to make an easy contact form for contacting local municipalities from a single website for my wife's NP
ekianjo 2y ago
but that means exposing an email address in the page source code
- atoav 2y ago
  Which you are legally required to do anyways in some parts of the world.
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    interesting! where is this required?
    - RicoElectrico 2y ago
      Germany probably? Impressum aka imprint.
      - canadianfella 2y ago
        > Impressum aka imprint. What does that mean?
        codetrotter 2y ago
        > An Impressum is a statement of ownership and authorship for online and print media. An Impressum helps combat spam and disinformation by holding creators responsible for their content. An Impressum is legally required for commercial sites operating in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. https://termly.io/resources/articles/impressum/ https://termly.io/resources/articles/impressum/
  - cchance 2y ago
    There’s a difference between a random contact adddress and one that your using for data processing and lead handling
- prepend 2y ago
  I don’t consider that a risk as running a web site likely already has some contact email. I can set up infinite emails on my $30/year cpanel host so I just create a new mailbox for the form and forward it wherever I like.
homarp 2y ago
but mailto is done on the client side. I am not sure everyone has a local mailto handler these days.
- kevincox 2y ago
  It is surprisingly rare. I remember working at Google even on documents targeted towards engineers many people were confused by a mailto.
Joker_vD 2y ago
I believe the last time I've sent an e-mail was in July 2017, when I was finishing my Master degree thesis, and I was glad I'd probably never have to do it again. Please don't ruin my dream?
- rglullis 2y ago
  Genuinely curious: what is so bad about writing an email? Do you really prefer/expect that every interaction with someone online is better to be had via an app or automated form?
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Easily yes. Especially when you interact with companies the email is just a shitty gateway to their actual CRM/Ticketing Software. Ignoring the general shittyness of email itself being plaintext or bastardized html that's destroyed the moment someone replies -- Different reply and quoting styles, emails |||||||| of every previous email in the thread. A haphazard mix of fonts, font sizes depending on the client, obnoxious signatures on every message. No one understands threads where threads in chat are immediately groked. Ignoring all that. Unsolicited communication mediums can go die in the hell from whence they came. All communication that allows someone to message me without asking, where new identities can be minted like candy so they're impossible to block permanently. Awful. My inbox is just for password resets and spam now. Same with SMS, it's the messaging of last resort. Being able to close your DMs to just actual humans you want to talk to is goated. Email, SMS, and my mailbox are just junk drawers ever since the marketing people got ahold of them.
    - rglullis 2y ago
      While a good rant is always appreciated, I don't see how forcing people to install an app or having an online form (which will very probably ask for your email anyway) is any better. And to avoid abuse, email masking services work quite well. It's just funny that with Communick I have a whole Discourse site setup because I was anticipating people weary of giving out email addresses, but in the end the majority of my customers just prefer to solve issues by email. One could dream of a world where XMPP is relevant and that most clients support its HTML submission capabilities, but this is also not the timeline we're in.
prepend 2y ago
Aside from having to have something to parse out the submission as the response isn’t that human readable, I think the biggest problem is that users need a mail client and requires them to hit send. This disorients people so even if they have a mail client, you end up with people not hitting submit.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I think you can register GMail and Outlook as mailto: handlers, but I've certainly never tried it.
  - prepend 2y ago
    You can, but many people do not do this.
  - arnorhs 2y ago
    You can. It is actually relatively hard to do though unless you are extremely motivated. Where you have to find a setting in mac / windows as well as configure your browser (chrome) for it, by using an obscure icon in the address bar etc.. and then you can have some apps fighting for you to change the setting. And then it depends on which browser profile is currently active. It is pretty messy to say the least
- cchance 2y ago
  There’s also the bigger issue your directly exposing an email address to web scrapers like it’s not the 90s using mailto forms is a shocking take as acceptable
  - prepend 2y ago
    This isn’t really a concern for me. I’ve had my gmail exposed to web scrapers for decades without making me regret it. For this purpose though it’s a non-issue as I also have a contact email published on my site so people can email me. And I would create a separate mailbox just for the form. I’m not sure why people are concerned about their email being scraped as it’s comical that any email address isn’t already on a million spam lists.
crazygringo 2y ago
If I hit "submit" on a form and I saw it start to open a new Gmail tab in my browser, I'm going to close the new Gmail tab before it even has time to finish loading. (Or same if I saw it opening Mail.app.) I'd just assume the site was trying to trigger some kind of spam e-mail or something. The idea that I'd fill out a form on a site, then submitting it would open my mail program, and I'd then have to hit send there, and then close my mail tab/window (not to mention exposing my e-mail address to the site when maybe I wouldn't want to), is some of the worst UX I've ever heard of.
- all2 2y ago
  Craigslist does this exact thing. They give you a custom email address to email, and then you click their link and it pops open gmail.
  - theamk 2y ago
    except it's actually labeled "gmail", so it is totally expected. Unlike the random form on unknown website.
- philsnow 2y ago
  I have a Pavlovian annoyance response to noticing that I have inadvertently clicked a mailto link, because back in ~2005 firefox would try to start Evolution. I usually only noticed the click because of the sound of my spinning disk thrashing to try to lift into memory hundreds of MB of dependencies from their rust platter slumber. Evolution generally didn't even load enough to so much as show its splash screen before I found a terminal and killed the process tree.
closewith 2y ago
I have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. 2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue. 3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
- kaashif 2y ago
  Classic comment and perfectly captures the vibe. I don't understand why people don't understand why making users do this weird shit (and yes, mailto: is weird although not as weird as SVN/CVS vs Dropbox) isn't going to work.
  - mcny 2y ago
    For today's lucky ten thousand, the grandparent comment is about dropbox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
    - teleclimber 2y ago
      And the "lucky ten thousand" is a reference to https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
oliwarner 2y ago
If you do this, recognise that you'll have a lot of desktop users fail out because they don't have an email client set up properly. And even when email sends, it's hard to guarantee delivery. I'd sooner set up and host an API than trust email to work in a business setting.
leobg 2y ago
I would guess that mailto will be great for deliverability. Since the user has already emailed you before your emails are more likely to go through to them and not get filtered as spam or promotion. Anyone have any data / observations on this?
CM30 2y ago
Sadly the best way to use this stopped working years ago. I vaguely recall in some browsers (maybe IE6 or earlier?) it actually send the submission to email directly without opening the user's email program at all. Having to send an email with the fields prepopulated feels rather archaic by comparison, and leaves me using form scripts as a rule now.
- theamk 2y ago
  automatically expose my email to any random marketer with a single button click? I can't imagine why anyone ever thought this would be a good idea.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

voytec 2y ago

> You guys know that you can use "mailto:" as form action, yes? Author mentions "a form with file upload capability".

pspeter3 2y ago

I had no idea that you could use the mailto: URL for a form action.

thih9 2y ago
Same. How would that work? What would be the end result (email body)?
- throwup238 2y ago
  Email body is in the “body” form field, subject line in “subject”, destination in “email”. https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-create-mailto-forms.html https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-create-mailto-fo...
  - bdcravens 2y ago
    Those parameters need to be passed in the mailto: URL, not the form, if the FORM is a POST mailto:example@gmail.com?subject=About+your+extended+warranty
- bdcravens 2y ago
  It passes all form fields in URL encoded format in the body (example, name=Billy+Cravens&state=TX)
  - GrantMoyer 2y ago
    Looks like it can also be plaintext encoded[1], so something like: name=Billy%20Cravens state=TX [1]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastructure.html#submit-mailto-body https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastr...
  - codetrotter 2y ago
    Sounds like a really bad UX I think if my mom was trying to submit a form, and it opened her email client with a body consisting of URL encoded data she’d probably just close the email client thinking that something went wrong. Then she’d try again and the same thing would happen again. Then she might call me, and I’d probably tell her to just forget about it and try to call them on the phone instead or give up and try another company instead.
    - vaylian 2y ago
      > with a body consisting of URL encoded data The e-mail client decodes the URL encoded data. So you actually see plain text. The encoding is only done for the purpose of passing the data from the browser to the e-mail client.
      - codetrotter 2y ago
        I created a form with a dropdown and a some other inputs. The result when using enctype=application/x-www-form-urlencoded and method=post in the form html is that the body that is shown in my email client is URL encoded. They have a different enc type that you could use to specifically make it plain text. That one is not recommended because then you're gonna have a bad time parsing out the fields that were submitted from the form.
        codetrotter 2y ago
        And for reference, here is what the mail body looks like with enctype=text/plain and method=post when it is opened in iCloud mail ready to send cat=services btext=adsfasdfsdafsdf afsdfas asd fa sdf as dfs subscribe-newsletter-weekly-yes=yes Other email clients might create different looking body for text/plain enc type.
- ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
  You see that in the "email" forms of for example most "contact" sites. Like, for example, here on HN, in the right end of the site's footer (on desktop), by clicking "Contact" (but this isn't a form, just a "mailto:..." link).
arnorhs 2y ago
this was something that was more commonly used in the late 90s/early/2000s, an early internet feature, but still works to this day. there are some niceties that have been added or maybe they were always possible - you can add a subject and message body, possibly cc etc. i used it just last year to make an easy contact form for contacting local municipalities from a single website for my wife's NP

ekianjo 2y ago

but that means exposing an email address in the page source code

atoav 2y ago
Which you are legally required to do anyways in some parts of the world.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  interesting! where is this required?
  - RicoElectrico 2y ago
    Germany probably? Impressum aka imprint.
    - canadianfella 2y ago
      > Impressum aka imprint. What does that mean?
      - codetrotter 2y ago
        > An Impressum is a statement of ownership and authorship for online and print media. An Impressum helps combat spam and disinformation by holding creators responsible for their content. An Impressum is legally required for commercial sites operating in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. https://termly.io/resources/articles/impressum/ https://termly.io/resources/articles/impressum/
- cchance 2y ago
  There’s a difference between a random contact adddress and one that your using for data processing and lead handling
prepend 2y ago
I don’t consider that a risk as running a web site likely already has some contact email. I can set up infinite emails on my $30/year cpanel host so I just create a new mailbox for the form and forward it wherever I like.

homarp 2y ago

but mailto is done on the client side. I am not sure everyone has a local mailto handler these days.

kevincox 2y ago
It is surprisingly rare. I remember working at Google even on documents targeted towards engineers many people were confused by a mailto.

Joker_vD 2y ago

I believe the last time I've sent an e-mail was in July 2017, when I was finishing my Master degree thesis, and I was glad I'd probably never have to do it again. Please don't ruin my dream?

rglullis 2y ago
Genuinely curious: what is so bad about writing an email? Do you really prefer/expect that every interaction with someone online is better to be had via an app or automated form?
- Spivak 2y ago
  Easily yes. Especially when you interact with companies the email is just a shitty gateway to their actual CRM/Ticketing Software. Ignoring the general shittyness of email itself being plaintext or bastardized html that's destroyed the moment someone replies -- Different reply and quoting styles, emails |||||||| of every previous email in the thread. A haphazard mix of fonts, font sizes depending on the client, obnoxious signatures on every message. No one understands threads where threads in chat are immediately groked. Ignoring all that. Unsolicited communication mediums can go die in the hell from whence they came. All communication that allows someone to message me without asking, where new identities can be minted like candy so they're impossible to block permanently. Awful. My inbox is just for password resets and spam now. Same with SMS, it's the messaging of last resort. Being able to close your DMs to just actual humans you want to talk to is goated. Email, SMS, and my mailbox are just junk drawers ever since the marketing people got ahold of them.
  - rglullis 2y ago
    While a good rant is always appreciated, I don't see how forcing people to install an app or having an online form (which will very probably ask for your email anyway) is any better. And to avoid abuse, email masking services work quite well. It's just funny that with Communick I have a whole Discourse site setup because I was anticipating people weary of giving out email addresses, but in the end the majority of my customers just prefer to solve issues by email. One could dream of a world where XMPP is relevant and that most clients support its HTML submission capabilities, but this is also not the timeline we're in.

prepend 2y ago

Aside from having to have something to parse out the submission as the response isn’t that human readable, I think the biggest problem is that users need a mail client and requires them to hit send. This disorients people so even if they have a mail client, you end up with people not hitting submit.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I think you can register GMail and Outlook as mailto: handlers, but I've certainly never tried it.
- prepend 2y ago
  You can, but many people do not do this.
- arnorhs 2y ago
  You can. It is actually relatively hard to do though unless you are extremely motivated. Where you have to find a setting in mac / windows as well as configure your browser (chrome) for it, by using an obscure icon in the address bar etc.. and then you can have some apps fighting for you to change the setting. And then it depends on which browser profile is currently active. It is pretty messy to say the least
cchance 2y ago
There’s also the bigger issue your directly exposing an email address to web scrapers like it’s not the 90s using mailto forms is a shocking take as acceptable
- prepend 2y ago
  This isn’t really a concern for me. I’ve had my gmail exposed to web scrapers for decades without making me regret it. For this purpose though it’s a non-issue as I also have a contact email published on my site so people can email me. And I would create a separate mailbox just for the form. I’m not sure why people are concerned about their email being scraped as it’s comical that any email address isn’t already on a million spam lists.

crazygringo 2y ago

If I hit "submit" on a form and I saw it start to open a new Gmail tab in my browser, I'm going to close the new Gmail tab before it even has time to finish loading. (Or same if I saw it opening Mail.app.) I'd just assume the site was trying to trigger some kind of spam e-mail or something. The idea that I'd fill out a form on a site, then submitting it would open my mail program, and I'd then have to hit send there, and then close my mail tab/window (not to mention exposing my e-mail address to the site when maybe I wouldn't want to), is some of the worst UX I've ever heard of.

all2 2y ago
Craigslist does this exact thing. They give you a custom email address to email, and then you click their link and it pops open gmail.
- theamk 2y ago
  except it's actually labeled "gmail", so it is totally expected. Unlike the random form on unknown website.
philsnow 2y ago
I have a Pavlovian annoyance response to noticing that I have inadvertently clicked a mailto link, because back in ~2005 firefox would try to start Evolution. I usually only noticed the click because of the sound of my spinning disk thrashing to try to lift into memory hundreds of MB of dependencies from their rust platter slumber. Evolution generally didn't even load enough to so much as show its splash screen before I found a terminal and killed the process tree.

closewith 2y ago

I have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. 2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue. 3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?

kaashif 2y ago
Classic comment and perfectly captures the vibe. I don't understand why people don't understand why making users do this weird shit (and yes, mailto: is weird although not as weird as SVN/CVS vs Dropbox) isn't going to work.
- mcny 2y ago
  For today's lucky ten thousand, the grandparent comment is about dropbox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - teleclimber 2y ago
    And the "lucky ten thousand" is a reference to https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

oliwarner 2y ago

If you do this, recognise that you'll have a lot of desktop users fail out because they don't have an email client set up properly. And even when email sends, it's hard to guarantee delivery. I'd sooner set up and host an API than trust email to work in a business setting.

leobg 2y ago

I would guess that mailto will be great for deliverability. Since the user has already emailed you before your emails are more likely to go through to them and not get filtered as spam or promotion. Anyone have any data / observations on this?

CM30 2y ago

Sadly the best way to use this stopped working years ago. I vaguely recall in some browsers (maybe IE6 or earlier?) it actually send the submission to email directly without opening the user's email program at all. Having to send an email with the fields prepopulated feels rather archaic by comparison, and leaves me using form scripts as a rule now.

theamk 2y ago
automatically expose my email to any random marketer with a single button click? I can't imagine why anyone ever thought this would be a good idea.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]