Markup Language Skeleton Customization › Specific Customization › Tips and Techniques › Adding Buttons to Send E-Mail

Adding Buttons to Send E-Mail

A useful feature in many websites allows users to click on a button and send an email, automatically passing information from the screen as data (To, Subject, Message, and so on) into the email itself.

A function called SENDEMAIL is included in the default YSCRIPT.JS file, which has five arguments (parameters): TO, CC, BCC, SUBJECT, and BODY. This function performs all the processing necessary to create an email.

Use the following code to create a button that sends e-mail:

<INPUT TYPE=”BUTTON” VALUE=”button-value”
 onclick=”SENDEMAIL(to-value, cc-value, bcc-value, subject-value, body-value)”>

To summarize:

• button-value is the text to display on the button (for example, “Send e-mail to us”)
• to-value, cc-value, bcc-value, subject-value and body-value are the values to use when sending the email.

Notes:

• If you need to use hard-coded values, enclose them in single quotes.
• You can specify any of the values as blanks, by not including a value between two quotes.
• You can include any information from elsewhere in the form by specifying the value from that field (as long as that field is named in the form), for example:

  <FORM...>
  ...
  <INPUT TYPE=”TEXT” NAME=”COMMENTS” VALUE=” ” SIZE=”100”>
  
  <INPUT TYPE=”BUTTON” VALUE=”Send us your comments” onclick=”SENDEMAIL('firstname.lastname@companyname.com' , '' , '' , 'My comments on your website' , this.form.COMMENTS.value)”
  ...
  </FORM>
  

  Clicking the Send us an email button opens an e-mail window with:

  • The To: box already set as 'firstname.lastname@companyname.com'
  • The Cc: and Bcc: boxes blank
  • The Subject: line already set to 'My comments on your website'
  • The body of the e-mail containing the text that the user entered in the COMMENTS text-box.

  In general, you can use any field value, by specifying it as:

  this.form.field-name.value
  

  Where field-name is the name of another field on the same form

  • field-name must be in the same case as the field name on the HTML page
  • this.form and value should be in lowercase (as in the 'this.form.COMMENTS.value' previous example)