The Bottom Line
Pros
- Yahoo! Mailer makes Yahoo! Mail handle email links on web pages
- With Yahoo! Mailer, a new compose page with the recipient pre-entered opens in your default browser
- Yahoo! Mailer can be used to make other email services (like Gmail) handle mailto: links, too
Cons
- Yahoo! Mailer cannot pass default subject or body information to the Yahoo! Mail compose page
- What's more, Yahoo! Mailer can interpret these wrong and mess up the email address in the process
- Setting up web-based email services other than Yahoo! Mail could be easier in Yahoo! Mailer
Description
- Yahoo! Mailer redirects email links to use Yahoo! Mail.
- Clicking a mailto link will open a new Yahoo! Mail message in a browser window.
- Yahoo! Mailer can be configured to work with other web-based email services, too:
- for Hotmail, use http://hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?mailto=1&to=%@
- for Gmail, use https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&to=%@&fs=1
- Alternatively, Yahoo! Mailer runs any program or shell script from a command line.
- Yahoo! Mailer supports Mac OS X 10.3+.
Guide Review - Yahoo! Mailer 1.0.3
Happy unless you click on one of those email links on a web site to send a message, which typically brings up Mac OS X Mail. Now you have to copy the email address, open Yahoo! Mail in your browser, paste the address and close Mail again — a bit arduous for a task that should take but one click. With Yahoo! Mailer, it does.
After you have made Yahoo! Mailer the default email client for Mac OS X (you can do that in Mail's preferences), clicking on an email link brings up a browser window with a new Yahoo! Mail composition screen, the recipient's address already entered in the "To:" field. It's as simple as that, and Yahoo! Mailer works seamlessly in the background.
Unfortunately, you may run into problems when the email link includes a default subject or body text in addition to the recipient's email address. Yahoo! Mailer cannot pass these to Yahoo! Mail (a limitation with the latter), and it may even mess up the email address. Ctrl-click on the link in this case and select "Copy Email Address", if your browser offers such a command.
Yahoo! Mailer also comes with a nice bonus, though: since the URL used for creating a new message can be tweaked freely, you can use Yahoo! Mailer to provide the same functionality with Gmail or Hotmail as well, for example.
