"Mailto:" no longer functions properly in Safari

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Level 1

38 points

"Mailto:" no longer functions properly in Safari

I manage a web site that uses forms to gather information from users - content is then generated and prepared as an email for them to send to a given address. The site used to be an http:// site but is now https://.

On the pages concerned I have (names disguised):

<form id="form_1" name="Form" onsubmit="return validate_form_1(this)" action="mailto:abc.def@nmo.cc" method="post" target="_self" enctype="text/plain"......

and later:

This works fine on Firefox and Chrome (I don't have access to a Windows machine to test that, nor an Android 'phone) but no longer on Safari, neither on iOS 12 nor Safari 14.1.1 on Mac OS 10.14.6 Mojave.

I have tried adding"https://" just before "mailto:" but this directs me o the main welcome pages of the supplier "nmo" (see the email address above). instead of the users' email client.

Any ideas what causes this and how to correct it would be most gratefully received! About half our users use Macs!

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Sep 3, 2021 5:06 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Nickiwi Author

Level 1

38 points

Sep 4, 2021 1:46 AM in response to Nickiwi

After a rather inconclusive "chat" with Apple's support team, they concluded that a telephone call was necessary, which I have just had.

The result is that that they agree it is indeed a Safari version problem, that it seems to work on the very latest versions available only on the latest version of MacOS and iOS, that Apple is realistically not going to update or correct this matter on "old" versions of Safari, that there seems to be no work-around that one can implement in html, and hence I am just going to have to recommend to all our users that if they come across this problem they should use Firefox, Chrome or Opera instead, or just send us an email independently of our web site.

Voilà, end of an incident, but I should also stress that the Apple support staff were all most helpful and pleasant to chat with.

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Answer 2

Nickiwi Author

Level 1

38 points

Sep 3, 2021 3:20 PM in response to Nickiwi

When I get the long message saying Safari has can't use addresses that begin with "mailto:", if I then refresh the page on which I get that message, I get a pop-up window that says "This website has been blocked from automatically composing an email.

Ignore - Allow - If I click "Allow" I can then send my form by email. But all this is by no means obvious, nor helpful.

It's also the same phenomenon whichever of the 3 possible contents I give to the "enctype" attribute:

application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data or text/plain

So the main question now becomes: how does one stop a website which nonetheless has SSL from being blocked from automatically composing an email? Especially as Safari is the only browser on Macs to block emails in the way, also on iOS 12 but not on iOS 14.

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