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

By  on  

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

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

  • By
    5 Ways that CSS and JavaScript Interact That You May Not Know About

    CSS and JavaScript:  the lines seemingly get blurred by each browser release.  They have always done a very different job but in the end they are both front-end technologies so they need do need to work closely.  We have our .js files and our .css, but...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools Fun with Fx.Shake

    Adding movement to your website is a great way to attract attention to specific elements that you want users to notice. Of course you could use Flash or an animated GIF to achieve the movement effect but graphics can be difficult to maintain. Enter...

  • By
    jQuery Comment Preview

    I released a MooTools comment preview script yesterday and got numerous requests for a jQuery version. Ask and you shall receive! I'll use the exact same CSS and HTML as yesterday. The XHTML The CSS The jQuery JavaScript On the keypress and blur events, we validate and...

Discussion

  1. 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).

  2. 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

  3. 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

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!