[WEB4LIB] Form posting in IE 6

[Thomas Dowling]

At 03:37 PM 8/28/2002, Tom Edelblute wrote:
>This one is driving me bananas.  I am creating a Web form with the
>following line.
>
><FORM ENCTYPE="text/plain" ACTION="mailto:thomas at anaheim.lib.ca.us"
>METHOD="POST">
>
>When I am in IE 6.0, fill out my form and click the submit button, the
>only thing that happens is my default e-mail program opens up and
>nothing on the form gets sent.  Netscape 4.73 submits the form data to
>my e-mail without any problem.  So what is up with IE 6?


Form actions with a mailto URL are notoriously unpredictable.  Different 
browsers do different things: silently send the message, alert you that it 
wants to send the message, open the completed message in a mail composition 
window, do nothing, etc.  To compound the confusion, identical browsers 
often do different things if they are configured to use their built-in mail 
client or a third-party mail client.

So without knowing exactly what's up with IE6 in your case, the best advice 
is to get a real server-side form handler.



Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu