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Karen wrote to Freepages-Help-L: "What if I use the form shown at: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/forms.html Will that work?"

Simple mailto: form

I set up the following test of the simple form described at that site. Filling in the fields with:

My name is: Leigh Compton
My e-mail address is: elsi@augustmail.com
I live in: Grapevine, TX
Visit my website at: http://www.rootsweb.com/
Surnames I'm researching are: Phifer, Norris
Comment: Another test, another test

The result is an e-mail message which looks like this:

Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 20:14:22 -0600
From: Elsi 
X-Accept-Language: en
To: elsi@augustmail.com
Subject: Form posted from Mozilla

name=Leigh+Compton&email=elsi%40augustmail.com&address=Grapevine%2C+TX&website=ht
tp%3A%2F%2Fwww.rootsweb.com%2F&researching=Phifer%2C+Norris&comment=Another+test%
2C+another+test%21

Customized mailto: form

Next, I used the customizations suggested at http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/g_book.html to supply a Subject for the e-mail and to have the input sent back as plain text instead of a string of HTML-encoded data. The input now looks like this:

My name is: Leigh Compton
My e-mail address is: elsi@augustmail.com
I live in: Grapevine, TX
Visit my websiteat: http://www.rootsweb.com/
Surnames I'm researching are: Sumner, Dantzler
Comment: A fancier mailto: form test.

And this is the e-mail that I received:

Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 21:03:24 -0600
From: Elsi 
X-Accept-Language: en
To: elsi@augustmail.com
Subject: Feedback - Mailto form
Content-Disposition: inline; form-data

name=Leigh Compton
email=elsi@augustmail.com
address=Grapevine, TX
website=http://www.rootsweb.com/
researching=Sumner, Dantzler
comment=A fancier mailto: form test.

Mailmerge form

Finally, I set up a test using the MailMerge script on Rootsweb. Filling in the fields with:

My name is: Leigh Compton
My e-mail address is: elsi@augustmail.com
I live in: Grapevine, TX
Visit my website at: http://www.rootsweb.com/
Surnames I'm researching are: Parker, Peavy
Comment: Testing a mailmerge form.

And the resulting e-mail message looks like this:

Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 18:38:54 -0800
To: elsi@augustmail.com
From: elsi@augustmail.com
Reply-to: elsi@augustmail.com
Subject: Feedback - Mailmerge form
X-mail-agent: mailmerge v1.0
X-form-location: http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~elsi/mailmerge-feedback.html

Leigh Compton, <elsi@augustmail.com>
Thu Jan  6 18:38:54 2000

Home address: Grapevine, TX
Web address: http://www.rootsweb.com/
Surnames: Parker, Peavy

Testing a mailmerge form.