opening Outlook through javascript

Question

Does anyone know how to open Outlook using Javascript?

I am getting an exception (in IE6) while using this code:

var outlookApp = new ActiveXObject(\         


        

Answer 1

You cannot open desktop applications through JavaScript for very obvious security reasons. The example you gave uses ActiveX which is a proprietary Microsoft technology only available in Internet Explorer.

If you simply want to open a message composition in a users email client with fields pre-filled, you can use the mailto: hyperlink prefix. This allows you to specify recipients, subject and body. Example:

Unless you have a requirement to specifically use Outlook (and I'd suggest you may want to revisit your requirements if that's the case), it is far more desirable to open whatever the default email client the user has set.