detecting when mailto failed

Question

When using a mailto link chances are that it doesn\'t do anything for the user if he doesn\'t have an email client setup, or didn\'t setup his webmail to be his default client (

Answer 1

Use a JavaScript confirm popup to ask the user if they have email setup on their computer.

Answer 2

You cannot detect whether or not a user has an email client setup. So I would suggest you to setup a server-side form for the user to contact you.

Beneath or above this you can provide the user a link explaining him that if he wants to contact you directly through his main e-mail account, he can click this link (this link being a mailto: link).

By providing him two ways of contacting you (webform or e-mail client), you give the user the opportunity to choose which one he wants to use. So it's up to him to realize whether or not he has an e-mail client installed and whether or not he wants to use it.

Answer 3

This article discusses a hack of checking if the window's blur event fired after clicking the mailto. It uses a timeout, so it's not foolproof, but might address most cases.

(function($)) {
  $('a[href^=mailto]').each(function() {
    var href = $(this).attr('href');
    $(this).click(function() {
      var t;
      var self = $(this);

      $(window).blur(function() {
        // The browser apparently responded, so stop the timeout.
        clearTimeout(t);
      });

      t = setTimeout(function() {
        // The browser did not respond after 500ms, so open an alternative URL.
        document.location.href = '...';
      }, 500);
    });
  });
})(jQuery);