HTML Forms Solutions

Vince Barnes knows how frustrating it can be to control what your forms are doing with the content.
“The distinguishing characteristic of an email form is found in its “ACTION” statement in the <FORM> tag. There is a description of this type of form in the HTML Goodies Forms Tutorials
In the example on that page we see this “ACTION” statement:

<FORM METHOD=”POST” ACTION=”mailto:your email address”>

The “ACTION” in this example is a “mailto:” with an email address. It is this which defines this form as an email form.

The problem arises because modern browsers, IE6 + and equivalent, no longer support email forms! The effect of this is that the visitor fills out the form and clicks the submit button and their email client program is invoked showing a blank email with the specified address in the “To” field. All information entered on the form appears to have been ignored. Essentially, these browsers are treating the email form as if it was a simple “Mailto” email link.

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That’s the problem, but like all good programmers all we see is an opportunity for a creative solution!
With that in mind, here are three solution offerings. The first is a solution primarily aimed at Unix (or similar) systems, and involves the use of CGI (Common Gateway Interface - see CGI Tutorials) and a mail system such as SENDMAIL (commonly installed on Unix and Linux systems.) The second is a little more specialized, in that it requires FrontPage Extensions, and the last, which uses ASP will only work for those of you who host your sites on Microsoft servers.”

The full details are available in the article provided by HTML Goodies