mailto: subject= and body= support in email clients

Question

Does anyone know if when sending a html newsletter what kind of support the major email clients have for the subject= and body= parts of the mailto tag?

Answer 1

The behavior varies by both email client and source application. Here's a likely enough example from my own system, using pjp's link.

Send Mail

• Mailto link followed within Outlook client successfully fills subject
• Mailto link followed in IE successfully fills subject for Outlook client
• Mailto link followed in Firefox fails for same Outlook client (subject text remains part of "TO" field)

I tried the same link in HTML emails read by gmail and Yahoo web clients.

• Gmail correctly opens a new message with desired subject
• Yahoo pre-fills the subject, but truncates at the space ("Hello" only)

That much variation on just one computer makes embedded mailto tricky to use. I bet that's why many email newsletters provide a "View as a web page" link in the header.