Help! Form processing

[Buzz]

Howdy Folks!
I've got a bit of a problem.

Just launched a new site and in the testing phase everything worked great but..... in real life it sucks!

I've got a few forms set up with the form action "mailto:address@dns.com?subject=the topic" enctype "text/plain"

The problem is that when these forms mail they are not coming through as standard mail. Often they are coming as attachements that are unopenable.

Everything was working great when I tested it on the exact same server (Win NT) just in a differnt directory.

Another problem is for some reason in IE when the submit button is clicked it forces the launch of the email client instead of just sending the darn form. This isn't at all a problem with NS. Now tell me that's not backwards! :)

Any help would be great. I'm open to any and all suggestions (Even purchasing somethign that will facilitate the form mailing functions). It is a Windows NT server. I'm familiar with cgi on a UNIX server but this is my forst experience with NT so I feel a bit at a loss.

History. . . the previous site was set up with Frontpage. ASP Ugh!!! Now it's all straight html, dhtml.

[Steven.Bentley]

Hi Buzz

The reason it works in Netscape is that the browser and mail client are properly integrated, IE has to call out to Outlook Express or something else and it doesn't always work, you're relying on the client being set up properly, and as you've found you can't rely on that ;)

Two real options here,

Either point the form at a CGI script on a 'proper' server

or

Try to get ASP to do the mailing

Here's a tutorial, not tried it, can't vouch for it :D
http://homepages.id.ibs.se/henrik/aspfaq/MailFromAsp.htm

[Buzz]

Thanks Steven. I've been the route of trying to switch to a proper server. . . it's not going to happen soon. ;)

Thanks for the lead. . asp really sux! Think I'll go hire someone to get it working and bill accordingly! :)

[Steven.Bentley]

I've not actually used ASP, but there are good reasons why I've stayed away from it :D

You don't have to put the whole site on the same server, you can set the form action to a cgi script on a proper server, and leave everything else on the the Windows toy.

[Buzz]

Now there's a damn fine idea!!!!! Why the heck didn't I think of that. You da man!

[Steven.Bentley]

:D

[degsy]

Not sure which Host/Servers you are using, but F2S.com are free and have a good tutorial on how to setup a formmail for their servers.
http://www.users.f2s.com/faq/formmail.php3

[Buzz]

Thanks degsy, it's a business site. We pay for hosting.