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Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 11/14/07 00:16
Scripsit André Gillibert:
> Usenet wrote:
>
>> What I've done is create a contact form, not give out an email
>> address. The contact form can be used to contact several different
>> mailboxes via a dropdown, but the dropdown doesn't have a full email
>> address in it, just a name (any kind of reference), which the form
>> looks up in a database and then emails to the corresponding address.
>
> Good.
Bad.
> This has many advantages over e-mail address.
Partly, but also disadvantages, so using a form _instead of_ an email
address is foolish.
> This is more accessible than e-mail,
Partly, but consider a user who needs his favorite e-mail program since it
has nice accessibility features, as opposite to the lousy implementation of
forms in web browsers. HTML forms are very primitive, and implementations
are even worse.
> (Giving both an e-mail address and an HTML form provides the best
> accessibility).
Not really. Giving them both _right_ provides the best accessibility. E-mail
is simple: just type the address. Making it a mailto: link is less relevant,
but probably a nice feature. Creating a form that avoids the basic flaws
seems to be almost impossible to mortals, given the fact that 99% of forms
on web pages have one or more _essential_ problem that could have easily
been avoided. Consider just too small textarea, presence of "reset" (=
destroy) button, and lack of adequate labels with <label> markup, and you
can probably find essential flaws in the great majority of forms.
> Beware: HTML forms can be spammed.
Yes, of course.
--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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