Question

Make a submit button open an e-mail

Asked by: williampeck

I want to have a submit button open an e-mail, I just think the submit button is a better user interface.

But all it should do is open an e-mail, i.e. "mailto:"

it works but it opens the e-mail twice (on FireFox)
it does nothing on IE-8
it opens once on Chrome

sheesh !

see here: http://www.info-scroll.com/lebron_james.html

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Asked On
2009-09-07 at 06:28:49ID24712598
Tags

HTML

,

XHTML

,

CSS

Topics

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

,

CoffeeCup HTMLEditor

,

Extensible HTML (XHTML)

Participating Experts
1
Points
125
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: jason1178Posted on 2009-09-07 at 19:44:51ID: 25278368

Hi williampeck,

You're not using the best code to accomplish the task:

<a href="mailto:user.removed@gmail.com?subject=Please subscribe me to your e-mail updates"><input type="button" value="Subscribe"></a>

<inputs> are meant to be used in a form framework and not on their own.  Wrapping an input in an <a> tag is also not good syntax and that could be causing FF to read two requests.

If you want a button to open the email client, you would be better using CSS to define a class that makes the link look like a button.

-----------

To be honest, using a mailto for a subscription is really not what you should be doing.  You should be passing the user's email address via a form to a database and having a script process things.

 

by: williampeckPosted on 2009-09-08 at 03:12:28ID: 25280186

jason1178,

thanks for the tips.

can you help me with the CSS to define a class that makes the link look like a button.

I don't have the skills nor the time to set up (and maintain) a database / script, etc. Trying to keep in simple with the appearance of being proper, my user base won't mind.

 

by: jason1178Posted on 2009-09-08 at 17:47:19ID: 25287436

Sure.  There are two methods you can use.  Either works.

1) Set a CSS class to have background color, borders, and padding.  Then apply the class to the <a> tag.  That will create a button-like effect around the link text.  The advantage to this is that it is simple and doesn't require any graphics.  Also, since the background stretches with the link text, width isn't a major consideration.  The disadvantage is that it doesn't look as spiffy as a regular button.

2) The other was to do it is to create a class for the <a> tag that uses a background image of a button.  You can either use an entire button which limits you by width, or a small image slice that repeats across the x-axis.

Code and sample image attached.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
 
.linkabutton {
	background: #CCC;
	padding: 5px;
	border: 2px ridge #000;
	cursor:pointer;
	text-decoration: none;
}
 
.graphiclink {
	cursor:pointer;
	border:outset 1px #ccc;
	background:#999;
	color:#00F;
	font-weight:bold;
	padding: 1px 2px;
	background:url(formbg.gif) repeat-x left top;
	text-decoration: none;
}
-->
</style>
</head>
 
<body>
<p><a href="test.html" class="linkabutton">This is a test </a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="test.html" class="graphiclink">This is also a test</a></p>
</body>
</html>

                                              
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by: williampeckPosted on 2009-09-08 at 18:51:59ID: 25287713

excellent ! works great, just what I was looking for.

might not win any design awards, but it does what I wanted.

http://www.info-scroll.com/lebron_james.html

 

by: jason1178Posted on 2009-09-08 at 21:04:06ID: 25288129

>> might not win any design awards, but it does what I wanted.

It won't, but it's not the worst I've ever seen either.  Good job.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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