email client

6 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: April 22, 2008   (RSS)

By rcrofoot - April 21, 2008

Hi Dave-

Thanks for all the help last week...

In the site I've been working on, I enable the user to send an email to one or more people (email addresses)...I have seperated each address with a semicolon, and if the email client that is envoked is Outlook Express everthing works fine...But if it's AOL, there's an error, and the mail doesn't get sent because AOL wants commas as seperators...

So my UNREALTED CMS question is, can you direct me to where I can find out how to detect a user's default email client using PHP...I've just spent a couple of hours looking on the internet, and can't seem to find anything...I'm stuck...Can you give me any suggestions or point me in the right direction??? Thanks in advance...Rick

Re: [rcrofoot] email client

By Dave - April 21, 2008

I'm pretty sure commas as separators is the standard. Does that work with both Outlook Express and AOL?

The standard is RFC2822 (link) and the php docs (link) indicate these are all valid examples:

user@example.com, anotheruser@example.com
User <user@example.com>, Another User <anotheruser@example.com>

How are you sending mail? With a mailto: link or something else? And is the error when you try and send the message or receive it (and what's the error)?

There's no way to detect the users mail client from PHP (or web apps). It's usually something that get's launched by the browser so until it's loaded you can't really tell.

Hope that helps.
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] email client

By rcrofoot - April 21, 2008

Dave-

I seperated the addresses with commas and that works fine in Outlook and AOL, so commas are the way to go...Up until now I've only used Outlook, which likes semicolons, but AOL doesn't...Anyway commas work...and that's what I'll use...

Thanks for taking the time on such a non-CMS-related matter! Rick

Re: [rcrofoot] email client

By rcrofoot - April 22, 2008

Hi Dave-

Just a follow-up on my last email about address seperators in an email "TO:" field...

It seems that Outlook 2003 & Outlook 2007 default to semicolons...You can change the default to commas...See this: http://support.microsoft.com:80/kb/820868

In Outlook Express however, which is what I use, it seems BOTH are legal...But AOL definately does not like semicolons, and wants to see commas...

Feel like I've been around the world on this one...but come to think about it, that's how I always feel with something that's new or unresearched! Writing PHP to send an email w/attachment was much easier than this mess! Should I thank Microsoft???

...Rick

Re: [Dave] email client

By rcrofoot - April 22, 2008

I just let the user choose what email client they're using: either "AOL" or "not AOL" and then format with comma or semicolon delimiters as appropriate...It's the easy way out, but that's what my client wants...Thanks again for the non-CMS advice/help...

Rick