Outlook Express?!!?

Question

I wanna understand why when I click on an email address somewhere on the net the Outlook Express opens and goes directly to the message writing with that email written automatically? I wanna do the same too, like launching the executable and specifying an address email in advance, how can I do that.. any arguments? anything?

Answer 1

this happens in your browser because it is configured to use Outlook Express as the linked email application. This is embedded in the browser's code, and specified in the user options (Tools \ Internet Options \ Programs). To do this yourself in a webpage, just specify the URL as a mailto: type.

I've written email enabled applications using VisualBasic. The facility to do this is MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interface.) How you implement MAPI will depend on your prefered code-base. Check the link for some direction.

Feel free to contact me if you need more specific help.

Answer 2

Outlook express does that because it is the registered e-mail client for your machine. You could write your own e-mail client and put it in the system registry and it would be started as well.

You can't otherwise launch an .exe file from a web page for obvious security reasons.