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[DanielB]

I usually access all of my various Hostpapa, ISP, Hotmail, GMail and other email accounts via Outlook but I recently got a Netbook and decided I'd just stick with webmail access, for now at least. So I've only just realized that when it comes to webmail as opposed to external applications, the Mozilla Firefox browser is only set up by default to handle clickable 'mailto' hyperlinks with "YahooMail" and "Googlemail"(ie: GMail) webmail services.

So I had to Google how to add my Hotmail accounts to Firefox's 'mailto' protocol handler. I found a nice step-by-step walk-through here.

It sounds a bit complicated but really it's not - and within 30 seconds or so I had it so that when I click a 'mailto' link on a webpage, a dialog box pops up and asks me which email service I want to use, I click it and then the selected webmail page opens in a new tab with the 'to' field (and any others included in the mailto link) already pre-filled. Nice!  

In the above linked thread, there was a link to a handy email link test page so one can check to see whether email links with 'subject', 'to', 'cc' etc fields get pre-filled correctly in the respective webmail composer page when it loads, and for Hotmail('Live' actually), it worked perfectly.

That done, I next tried to do the same with my Hostpapa email account - using SquirrelMail.

I noticed that the (secure) URL for my 'Compose' pane was:

https://[mydomain]:2096/3rdparty/squirrelmail/src/compose.php?mailbox=INBOX&startMessage=1

so while that page was open, pasted:

javascript:navigator.registerProtocolHandler('mailto','https://[mydomain]:2096/3rdparty/squirrelmail/src/compose.php?uri=%s','[MyDomain webmail]')

.. into the address bar, granted it permission to be added, when prompted, and tested it out using a 'mailto' link like this that is meant to pre-fill a number of the fields (mailto:noone@mozilla.org?cc=bob@mozilla.org&subject=subject&body=hello world
).

When I tested it, the 'Compose' page opened but no fields were filled in - even the 'to' field was blank. I soon discovered that with SquirrelMail, it's rather complicated - experiment as I might, whatever i tried didn't work - it's not just a matter of playing with the metadata portion of the javascript that installs the specific webmail protocol handler[/b] - SquirrelMail uses some unique metadata identifiers and it can't understand what Firefox (well the URL being passed to it by the handler) is telling it.

So I did more reading.. see here: http://squirrelmail.org/wiki/WindowsMailto
At the bottom of that page is a javascript command with a special protocol handler, referencing a .php file I was not already familiar with. When I installed this handler and tested it out on a 'mailto' link, the Compose.php page would not load - it just resulted in a loading error.

Re-reading the paragraph above the script on that page, I noticed that it mentioned needing to install "Michael's code" -- which I then read was referring to the fact that a .php script a guy named Michael A Puls II had written needs to be installed on the SquirrelMail server as explained below, in order to properly convert(translate) the field metadata ('%s" for "subject=", etc) into a format SquirrelMail webmail understands:

* To configure a client that supports registerProtocolHandler, use
 * the following template string in the client's registerProtocolHandler config:
 *
 * http://<your server>/<squirrelmail base dir>/src/html5_mailto.php?uri=%s
 *
 * This file goes in SquirrelMail's src directory.

And that's where I've got stuck.  
I looked all through my Hostpapa account's files and folders using the cpanel File Manager, but it seems we don't actually have access to the [mydomain]/3rdparty/SquirrelMail folder (& subfolders) or its files. So, it seems I can't add the mailto_protocol_handler.php file to the the required location as per the handler's reference: "[mydomain]/3rdparty/squirrelmail/src/mailto_protocol_handler.php?uri=%s".

IS that something that you guys at Hostpapa can (pretty please, fingers crossed that it's possible) install universally, something you can grant & install on a per-customer basis, or is this just a "too bad, sorry" kind of thing?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

.. now off to work on my other accounts...