mailto links (#1010)

Topics/tags: Rants, technology

The other day, I clicked a link on the class roster page Grinnell’s Blackboard System, officially known as Pioneer Web and colloquially referred to as P’Web. Although my mail reader popped up, as I had expected, the To: field was incorrect. Here’s what appeared in that field, appropriately anonymized.

I observed the same behavior whether I used Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or Opera [1]. Why didn’t the message appear correctly? Some folks would say that it’s because I’m using a Macintosh. But I believe the problem is a bit more complex than that. I think it has to do with how they formatted the mailto link. Here’s the link that appeared in the original.

mailto:username@grinnell.edu&FromName=Samuel Rebelsky&Subject=84607 Course Message&fromaddress=rebelsky@grinnell.edu&popup=true

Let’s try a series of experiments. We’ll start with just the basics.

mailto:username@grinnell.edu

Yup. That works fine.

Now, let’s add the subject. I don’t particularly like the subject that Blackboard chooses, but I’m not going to be picky.

mailto:username@grinnell.edu&subject=84607 Course Message

Nope. It all appears in the To field.

Okay. Let’s check the documentation for mailto URIs. Ah! Start with a question mark, not an ampersand. I knew that. Or at least I should have known that.

mailto:username@grinnell.edu?subject=84607 Course Message

Yup. That works. That is, the username@grinnell.edu appears in the To: field and the useless 84607 Course Message appears in the subject. Now let’s try the longer one.

mailto:username@grinnell.edu?FromName=Samuel Rebelsky&Subject=84607 Course Message&fromaddress=rebelsky@grinnell.edu&popup=true

That works just like the prior one. I wonder whether I can futz with it?

mailto:username@grinnell.edu?FromName=Raynard Kington&Subject=84607 Course Message&fromaddress=kington@grinnell.edu&popup=true

Nope. It makes no difference. So why do they generate such a long URI? I have no idea. In any case, it’s time to report the issue to ITS so that clicking on the link works appropriately.

Version 1.0 of 2020-02-06.