I've been thinking about how to handle mailto links on a website redesign, and I know that having an email address listed can make a user feel more comfortable about contacting rather than just a contact form.
The obvious issue with mailto is the fact that it'll open the default mail client, even if that is not configured correctly by the user.
So, an idea I have is that when a user clicks on the email address, a small popover appears asking whether the user wants to copy that email address to their clipboard (which would be a simple anchor to do so), or whether they want to open that email address in their default application (which again would be an anchor).
The obvious issue with this is that it adds an extra step to actually sending an email, but I am wondering anyone knows of any research behind usability something like this. Or maybe there is a better way to do this that I didn't think of?
-- On a side-note, I imagine this behavior would only happen on desktop since the most likely case for mobile devices is that the person has properly setup their mail client.
mailto:
link? Perhaps something similar to the pop-up that StackExchange shows when you click on a "Share" link: an edit box pre-filled and pre-selected with the email address (that can beCtrl-C
d or right-click-copied) with a "Launch email client" link below (where SE have the Google/Facebook/Twitter icons)?mailto
link and it auto opens my email client on desktop. I would much prefer to just copy the email address and do whatever I need with it so that I have the control. So I think something like this would satisfy that, and it's not too intrusive to cause an issue. If you want to add your comment as an answer I'll mark it as accepted.