Exploring Mailto in Canvas
What is a mailto link?
Chances are you have interacted with a mailto link during your frequent visits to the internet, but perhaps you’ve never created one yourself. Or if you have used a mailto in Canvas, you may not have used it to its full potential.
A mailto link is a type of hyperlink that instead of taking the user to a website, it instead directs them to send an email. When the user clicks on the link, the computer will pull up their email client. The basic code for a mailto link is:
<a href="mailto:[the email address]">Send Email</a>
Clicking on the link will then open a new mail window. You can send an email to more than one address by separating the addresses with a comma:
<a href="mailto:[first email address], [second email address]">Send Email</a>
How to use the mailto attribute
The mailto code is an HTML attribute that supports seven parameters, which we will discuss below. But my first word of advice is to simply do an online search for a mailto generator, put in your information, and copy the code they give you. A quick google search provides me with a few good sites to consider:
These all seem just fine and will spit out code that you can put in Canvas. There are seven parameters for the mailto attribute, but the only component that is essential is the email address. Everything else is optional.
mailto: [email address] This parameter specifies the email address of the recipient.
cc: You can use this if you want to carbon copy (Cc) another email address. This is optional.
bcc: You can use this if you want to carbon copy (Cc) another email address. This is optional.
subject: This allows you to write a subject for the mail. This is optional.
body: This allows you to write out content for the mail. This is optional.
? and @: These two parameters are delimiters. If you use one of the mailto generators, you may see these parameters. These are optional.
My last bit of advice is before you publish your Canvas page, make sure you preview your mailto to make sure it works and that everything appears the way you want it. Send yourself a test email.
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