Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 01/29/58 11:45

On Thu, 20 Apr 2006, Hywel Jenkins wrote:

> > > > <form method="post" action="mailto:example@domain.com">
> > > Oh God. Please don't do that. It doesn't work.
>
> > Yes it does. Exactly as I've described.

It might do that from a subset of browsers and configurations.
You've already been advised, quite correctly, that it is not a
responsible thing to offer on the WWW.

The only specified protocol for a form action attribute is http.
Whatever happens when you use something else is, well, whatever
happens.

> > It sends the raw plaintext version of the form data, by email, to
> > the email address specified.

So it's not even in one of the defined form submission formats.
Even worse.

> > It's designed so that you can email the data to your CGI programme

Now you're putting words together without achieving any coherent
sense. The CGI is a defined software interface between a web server
and your server-side "script" (using the term "script" in the generic
sense in which it's commonly used in the relevant context).

If you don't submit the form to a web server - using one of the
submission formats defined in the HTML specification - then you
haven't got the circumstances where the CGI software interface comes
into play. So your talk of a "CGI programme"(sic) seems to be out of
place.

In short, you're on your own. Which might be fine if you were only
doing it to yourself; but it appears you're proposing to do it to the
web, which isn't nice.

[Back to original message]