35977 - mailto: doesn't work

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 11459

(Core :: Networking, defect, P3)

Description

[Jeremiah Rogers]

When I put a link for email on my website, and tried to access it with a
compiliation of mozilla that didn't have mail/news built in, I got an error that
said there was no mailto protocol.

Comment 1

[Douglas Lee]

I'm curious about that.  I mean, shouldn't we expect the mailto: *not* to work
*because* there is no mail/news element installed? Without the mail/news
component installed, mozilla probably wouldn't know how to handle the mailto:
request.

Comment 2

[Richard Zach]

jeremiah, what do you think is a bug about the behavior that you describe?

Comment 3

[Jeremiah Rogers]

Yes, i would expect that mailto: should not work when there is no mail/news
element installed. However I think it should be concidered a bug for mozilla to
complain about mailto: not being a protocol. While clicking on the mailto: link
shouldn't work, mozilla probably shouldn't have a problem with the link if there
is no mail/news element, just as netscape standalone doesn't complain about
mailto: links, but still doesn't let me send mail through them.

Comment 4

[Richard Zach]

I'm not going to compile Mozilla without Mailnews to verify this, but I suspect
that the error message says "mailto: is not a *registered* protocol"  (emphasis
mine).  And if you don't have Mailnews installed, that's exactly true.  There is
no mailto: protocol handler, so mailto: is not a registered protocol.  I still
don't see a bug here.

Comment 5

[Douglas Lee]

Seems to me that mozilla's just telling you something straight out.  There's no 
mailto: protocol because there's nothing to handle it, if you haven't installed 
the mail/news element.  In that situation, perhaps mozilla could "reference" to 
the user's OS, asking what's the default mail reader so if you didn't install 
mozilla's mail/news, it'd automatically go somewhere else (eg. Eudora)?

Comment 6

[Richard Zach]

Bug 11459 covers being able to use external mail clients or webmail for mailto:
URLs.

Comment 7

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

I think that this is a wontfix or a duplicate of 11459.  marking it duplicate.  

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 11459 ***

Comment 8

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Sorry for the spam.  New QA Contact for Browser General.  Thanks for your help
Joseph (good luck with the new job) and welcome aboard Doron Rosenberg

Comment 9

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

verify

Comment 10

[benc]

->networking
QA reviewed.
Testcases and documentation done.