Open a default mail client from a html page which has to pass data to "TO" field with more than 4000 characters

Question

I can either use java or html to do this. I have tried using window.open(), but there is a cap on the length of string passed. I have tried using runtime.exec(), but with no luck. Can anyone suggest any other method for achieving this. I am not supposed to use java swing to achieve this. The java runtime I use is java 1.5.Please help me regarding this.

Answer 1

The constraints are there for a reason, and this time they prevent you from doing something that you shouldn't do in the first place.

When you send a mail using the TO-field, the address is included in the header of the email-message and is sent to everyone that receives it. So what wrong with that you may ask. Several things:

• Most mail servers and email clients have a limit on how large the header of the message could be.
• Everyone gets the address to everyone else, so when the click reply-all instead of reply, the send their message to everyone instead of just the sender. A couple of people will do that, and then the mails start coming from the people that says that they aren't interested in their replies, and then the mail start coming from the people that begs everyone to stop sending mails because it kills the company mailserver.
• Once of the recipients have a virus on the computer, and even if computer viruses don't have feelings this virus will be very happy and send emails to every email address it can find about how to make things larger or whatever the topic the spammers want to use that day. And add all the addresses to a global list that several other spammers will use to send their emails to everyone.

So, what should you do instead? First of all, only use the TO-filed if you have less than say 10 recipients and the already know each other. In every other case use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) and everyone gets a copy of your mail but don't get the addresses of whom you sent all the other mails to.

If you have a large list of addresses to send a mail to, use a list server. It will split the sending of the address list in as many chunks that is needed. Keep this centralized list up to date an several persons can send mails to the list using the latest addresses.