First of all, what you are describing are what are called “MailTo:” links. These are specialized HTML commands that link directly to an e-mail address.

To create a link that sends an e-mail to somebody, use the HTML mailto: tag. Your code will look like this: ...

If MailTo links are not opening or working in Microsoft Outlook, you need to set Outlook as the default app for MailTo links.

Do you want to add a mailto link to your Outlook signature? We show you how to do that using the Insert Hyperlink option.

But the Mailto: extension is really the simplest to use: click to install, then select from one of the five webmail services—Fastmail, Gmail, Hotmail/Windows Live Mail, Yahoo mail, or Zoho mail.

What alternative is there to the construct to accept more than 200 characters? I seem to have bumped into the string length limit of 256 characters.quote: ...

Now, if you click a mailto: link—try the tips link on Lifehacker's sidebar—Firefox 3 will ask which application you want to use. Choose Gmail, and select "Remember my choice for mailto links ...

I tried to add Hotmail as a choice for mailto: links in Firefox 4.0.1, but it's not working. Regardless of which value I change, the options remain the same. Interestingly, even if I overwrite the ...