Looking for advice from geek friends

[lokheed]

Simple question for those of you who know more about the inner workings of HTML than I do (let's face it, I may be able to write some wicked c# that drives web pages, but if I have to start working with any kind of complex client-side script I break out in a sweat):

Is it even possible to have a mailto: link that opens an email formatted to send in HTML?  I know I can pass in a subject and a body in a mailto: tag, but just passing in html doesn't make the email *treat it* as html.  I am thinking that this would be something dictated entirely by the email client, over which I have no control whatsoever.  Am I missing anything, or is this an impossible task?

Comments

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

Can you give me an instance where this would be both a desirable thing to do and technologically necessitated?

It would seem at first glance that this would require an HTML complient mailer, and i don't think that you can assume the presence of such a beast on a system. Perhaps if you pass in ?mime-version=text/html- but this would be a sheer guess that you could extend the mailto: formatting options.

[lokheed.livejournal.com]

Prepare to wince:

Because it's how Eve wants it to behave.

I want to be positive I am on solid ground when I say (in the immortal words of Loudon Wainwright III) , "My therapist has told me to be particularly assertive with women, so I'm sorry, but no."

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

Talk to Lisa Bowen and convince her that it's a BAD IDEA even if it's possible. If it is even possible, it's beyond the scope of the W3C spec for the mailto (and yes, I looked), and shouldn't be something we use development cycles (read: waste time) trying to implement.

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

Here is the aforementioned W3C spec.

The more I think about the worse an idea it seems. From a security perspective, it's a potential disaster- what's to keep someone from using the fact that it's assuming that it's getting qualified HTML from embedding something like Melissa or LoveBug? The affinity between browser and mail client is a serious fundamental security flaw.