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Creating Advanced XHTML Email Links: Include Subject, CC, BCC, and Email Body

By David Walsh on March 20, 2008

Creating email links is a piece of cake, right? It's as simple as:

<a href="mailto:live@wembley.com">Email Oasis</a>

Everyone knows this. Did you know, however, that you can include subject, CC, BCC, and email body text information in the link as well? Using a querystring-like syntax, you can do more with that simple link.

<a href="mailto:live@wembley.com">Email Oasis</a>

<!-- add the subject -->
<a href="mailto:live@wembley.com?Subject=Your Next Show">Email Oasis</a>

<!-- add the cc's and bcc's -->
<a href="mailto:live@wembley.com?Subject=Your Next Show&CC=johnl@beatles.com&BCC=paulm@wings.com">Email Oasis</a>

<!-- add some default body text -->
<a href="mailto:live@wembley.com?Subject=Your Next Show&CC=johnl@beatles.com&BCC=paulm@wings.com&Body=I can't wait for the next show!">Email Oasis</a>

Remember that simply placing email addresses on a page without encoding them first is like simply emailing spammers your email address. Encode your email addresses!

Recent Features

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Last December I wrote a blog post titled Create Spinning Rays with CSS3 Animations & JavaScript where I explained how easy it was to create a spinning rays animation with a bit of CSS and JavaScript. The post became quite popular so I...

Incredible Demos

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One of the important functions of CSS is to position elements. Margin, padding, top, left, right, bottom, position, and z-index are just a few of the major players in CSS positioning. By using the above spacing...
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Many of the new APIs provided to us by browser vendors are more targeted toward the mobile user than the desktop user. One of those simple APIs the Vibration API. The Vibration API allows developers to direct the device, using JavaScript, to vibrate in...

Discussion

George Conklin
Your post here saved me some time at work, so thanks. I can just never remember if its PHP or URL encoding that is choosy about how CC is written (cc, CC, or Cc).
garrobo
George,

I need help on getting a comment system like the one I’m writing on, my question to you is how to get it to my website is there a code that I need to download or do I need to purchase it let me know
I’m in love with it. thanks
2nix
I’d like to thank you, for this tutorial, as a newbie in xhtml, its a lot of thing i never know before, thanks for this ‘mailing’ tutorial. Im sorry for this bad english