How to Format Emailed result from a Form
Edmond Lo
Hi everyone,
I have a form in table format, and result is being sent to my email
address, ie, with ACTION="mailto:my.email@address".
I was wondering if there is a why of formating the resulting email
message without using CGI?
Thank for any respone.
Cheers,
Cake.
J. Kivi Shapiro
In article <5n3d5v$k1r$1...@wolfman.xtra.co.nz>,
Edmond Lo <ca...@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>ACTION="mailto:my.email@address".
>I was wondering if there is a why of formating the resulting email
>message without using CGI?
Yes, there are programs to do that, and Dave V. will undoubtedly
mention his before long. However, I would encourage you not to use
"mailto forms".
The "mailto:" protocol was developed to send mail, not to transmit form
information. The Wilbur specification allows it to be used in this
fashion, but there are many browsers which do not implement it in that
way, notably Microsoft Internet Explorer, NCSA Mosaic, and earlier
versions of Netscape Navigator. Those browsers, if they do anything,
will bring up a blank email window for their users, discarding all the
information they have entered into the form.
Even for those people whose browsers do automatically insert form
information into email, there are problems. For example, there's no
interaction: when they submit the data, there's no indication that
anything's happened. They have no way of telling whether they were
successful or not.
For these reasons, I would recommend not using "mailto:" as an action
for forms. CGI scripts work much better to that purpose. CGI
scripting is not difficult for those who have had any experience
programming, and there are even archives of previously written scripts
that you can use with very minor changes. A good list of World Wide
Web pages is at
<URL:http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/
World_Wide_Web/CGI___Common_Gateway_Interface/>
and useful information can also be found in the newsgroup
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi
If you can't use CGI scripts on your site for whatever reason, there
are even services which will allow you to use scripts on their sites.
The four I know of are:
- Meng Weng Wong's mailto.cgi (which is complicated but flexible, and
free), at
<URL:http://icg.resnet.upenn.edu/mailto.html>
- Remote Software (which is actually several services, one of which
is easy to use and free), at
<URL:http://www.remote-software.com/products.html>
- CGI Free (which is also flexible, simple, and free, but doesn't let
you specify the address for the From field), at
<URL:http://cgi-free.com/>
- the Electronic Stamps System (which costs money, but has a one-week
free trial period), at
<URL:http://www.cambridgeco.com/e-stamps/>
(Thank you to Jukka Korpela for the notes!)
Note that I am not affiliated with any of these services, and would
love to hear of any additions to the list.
Good luck!
- Kivi
--
ksha...@julian.uwo.ca or ki...@pobox.com (Kivi Shapiro)
It's all right. I'm a librarian.
Dave V.
Cake,
Check out WebForms 2.5g. It will create your forms (CGI
or mailto) and Perl scripts if necessary, and import your
responses from your POP3 mailbox directly into an MS-Access
database on your hard drive (MS-Access not required). It
includes many other features, like Scrolling Status Bar
Messages, form submission confirmation messages, and
redirection (sending them to the next page).
Also try WebMania 2.0a, our full-featured HTML editor with
Spell-checker, Frame Wizard, Image Map Wizard, Forms Wizard, and
much more.
You can download either program at http://www.q-d.com .
On Wed, 04 Jun 1997 08:54:47 GMT, ca...@xtra.co.nz (Edmond Lo) wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>I have a form in table format, and result is being sent to my email
>address, ie, with ACTION="mailto:my.email@address".
>I was wondering if there is a why of formating the resulting email
>message without using CGI?
>Thank for any respone.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Cake.
>
>
Thanks,
Dave Verschleiser
Q&D Software Development - http://www.q-d.com
Creators of WebForms, WebMania, and Bookmark Magician
=======================================================
For the best SHAREWARE on the Net, check out:
** The Shareware Central Interactive Catalog **
** http://www.q-d.com/swc.htm **
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=======================================================
Tom Stelzriede
On Wed, 04 Jun 1997 08:54:47 GMT, ca...@xtra.co.nz (Edmond Lo) wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>I have a form in table format, and result is being sent to my email
>address, ie, with ACTION="mailto:my.email@address".
>I was wondering if there is a why of formating the resulting email
>message without using CGI?
>Thank for any respone.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Cake.
>
>
If you put ENCTYPE="text/plain" in the <FORM> statement, the
results usually arrive by e-mail in a column, with one name/value pair
per line, instead of all strung out on one line.
Tom
Alan J. Flavell
On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, Tom Stelzriede wrote:
(comprehensive quote of the posting, including sig - always a danger
sign on usenet)...
> If you put ENCTYPE="text/plain" in the <FORM> statement, the
> results usually arrive by e-mail in a column,
"Usually"???
What happens the rest of the time, then?
Wouldn't it be better to have a method that works more often than
"usually"?
--
"Looking different is a feature, not a bug" - Jakob Nielsen,
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9705a.html
Abigail
Alan J. Flavell (fla...@mail.cern.ch) wrote on 1379 September 1993 in
<URL: news:Pine.A41.3.95a.970610185608.164528B-100000@sp071>:
++ On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, Tom Stelzriede wrote:
++
++ > If you put ENCTYPE="text/plain" in the <FORM> statement, the
++ > results usually arrive by e-mail in a column,
++
++ "Usually"???
++
++ What happens the rest of the time, then?
Then you send back a rude replay "Download Foobar browser now!".
Djee, Alan, don't live in the stone age! We've done away with
platform independence and user choices, that's an idea of that
old man TBL.
Abigail
--
Anyone who slaps a "this page is best viewed with Browser X" label
on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the
Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on
another computer, another word processor, or another network.
[Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996]