How can you create an email link?

Answer 1

To create an email link, you use the standard anchor tag, and define the protocol as "mailto:" and the address as the address you are trying to link to.

For instance, if we wanted to create an email link to send mail to Tom@Example.com, the link would look something like this:

<a href="mailto:tom@example.com">Mail Tom!</a>

You can also include the subject line and even define the email body with the link. (See related link.)

When the user clicks this link, the browser will attempt to create a new email using whatever it believes the default email client to be. Sometimes this is very convenient. Sometimes this is annoying. The chance of having a user click the link and having to deal with Outlook attempting to set itself up is one that you need to be aware of.

The other risk here is that any web crawler is able to read this email address. That means that, if a crawler that is collecting addresses for SPAMmers comes across it, Tom@Example.com will have all sorts of fun emails to look forward to.

Because of this risk, the current best practice is to either use a contact form, or to obfuscate the email address via JavaScript. (See related link.)