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javascriptemailmailto

Detecting web-based mail client vs local mail client for a mailto link

I have a web application from which the user can send an email using a mailto link. Basically, I concatenate a string that contains the subject, body and recipients and then the code triggers a mailto, somewhat like this:

var MailToLink = 'mailto:' + TheEmailString;

window.open(MailToLink, '_blank'); //option 1
window.open(MailToLink); //option 2

Initially, I only had option 2 because on my dev machine I have Outlook. But as I started some alpha testing, another user was using Gmail and the mailto link would open in the same window as my app so I changed my code to option 2 so that the email opens in another window. The problem now is that when the user is on Outlook, the link opens both an Outlook message and a new blank window.

Is there a way to detect if the user is using a web-based email client or a local client? I would like to do something like this:

if (IsUsingWebMailClient) {

    window.open(MailToLink, '_blank');

} else {

    window.open(MailToLink);
}

I'm not sure if this is even possible; how do I detect the mailto client using JavaScript?

Solution

  • It's a bit of a hack, but that works. The time out may vary, you can test with more and less milliseconds.

    <html>
    <head>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            function mailTo(address){
                var windowRef = window.open('mailto:'+address, '_blank');
                var body = windowRef.document.getElementsByTagName('body')
                if(!body.lenth) setTimeout(windowRef.close,300)
            }
        </script>
    </head>
    <body>

    <input type="button" value="send email" onclick="mailTo('email@gmail.com')" >

    </body>
</html>