Mailto and some of its many problems.

I just realised what an annoyance the URI scheme mailto: is. When I see an email address somewhere on a webpage or in an app, it is very rare that I want to use it to create a new mail from my default mail address in my default mail client with that mail in the to-field.

Here are some of things I may equally well want to do:

• Add it to my contact list for later use.
• Paste it in a mail or SMS to forward it to someone else.
• Add it to CC or BCC field.
• Add it to a mail I already started writing.
• Send it from another client than my default. (I almost only use web mail.)
• Search for it in my mailbox or on my hard disk, to see if I already had a contact with them.

The irony is that the person who put their mail address in a mailto-element on a web page probably already is inundated by spam, as it is about lesson one in the spammers manual of favourite tricks, to crawl webpages looking for valid target mail addresses.