Programming for E-mail

[MrDon]

Now this may be very simple but I have had a complaint that when using the Netscape Browser that the e-mail link on my home page does not work! What is that all about? To check this out for myself I opened Netscape and, sure enough, it didn't work! I opened up another's page to see how they did it and that didn't work either. Is it the Netscape browser and how do I fix it? Yes it has always worked fine with IE. I use outlook express as my e-mail client on my computer.

This is an example of what is being used.

<a href="mailto:webmaster@wiserrentals.com"> Webmaster</a>

It only shows the Webmaster underlined in the post but you know how to see the rest. Put the mouse on "Webmaster"

Thanks,

Don

[UncaDanno]

Quick answer:
Netscape doesn't support the "mailto:" construct. At least when handing it off to a non-Netscape mail viewer.

Now, it's been a while, so don't hold me to it, but I think that if you change Netscape Messenger to be your default email reader, the mailto: might work.

But then you have your email scattered in two different apps. And you can't consolidate them.

[MrDon]

Thanks, I was afraid of that! I am sure you are correct. I do remember a long time ago when I was using the Netscape browser and E-mail this was not a problem. If this is happening to many viewing those pages how could I possibly explain that? Even so I am sure they would not wish to change their E-mail or default browser to Netscape. Just as I would not even consider changing from Outlook Express back to Netscape E-mail.

I have used a Mickey Mouse solution by putting the actual email address, rather than a link, and asking them to cut and paste if it does not work with their browser. There must be a better way!

Thank you for your assistance.

PS: This does not happen when using IE as your browser and Netscape is your E-mail reader. It first opens a Netcape browser and then the blank Netscape E-mail form for you to use. If Netscape would fix theirs we would be fine!

[UncaDanno]

I think the explanation would be that if you look at Netscape, the browser and mail viewer are pretty much parts of the same overall application. IE and Outlook are two separate applications.
So, if Netscape is the only thing on the client machine, its mail viewer is also the default viewer. No prob.
IE can hand off to Outlook or the Netscape mail viewer because it knows how to hand off to a separate application.
Netscape doesn't hand off to a separate mail viewer app (e.g. Outlook) gracefully because it was designed to hand off to its own viewer.
The setting that designates your default email viewer is a function of the registry, not necessarily an application-controlled thing. So Windys tries to get Netscape to hand off to another app and it "refuses to play with others".

Short of changing the default email program to Messenger, I think that the Mikey Mouse solution is the only one that will be viable. It's the only one I have found to work.

[MrDon]

That explains it very well. Thank you for your interest!

Don

[G3]

cause if someone is on your site and is using netscape for their main browser, then they will probably have set up the netscape mail viewer on it on their machine, so mailto: will work with their netscape...you just haven't set up the mail client on yours yet...