Sorry for the question title, it's a little difficult to phrase in my opinion. Here is the full question:
The WYSIWYG HTML editor we use on our websites includes a // in the mailto: link when inserted into the text editor box (mailto://). We are a webfirm and use this editor on many, many websites. For example, all the mail links inserted appear like this:
<a href="mailto://email@domain.com">Text Here</a>
We just noticed this morning that Windows computers do not include the // in the To: field when clicked regardless of the email client it's opened with. It will include the email as normal (email@domain.com).
However, Mac computers are including the // though, so whenever someone tries to send an email using these links, it's trying to email //email@domain.com - which isn't delivering, because obviously it's an invalid format with the //s.
Does anyone have any knowledge to why this is happening? The WYSIWYG editor we are using is obout. If we have to go back and remove these // from every single website we've built, it would be a tremendous task. I'm just wondering why Macs seem to not process the link correctly, while Windows computers do.
The Macs are processing the link correctly. Windows is incorrectly removing data and your editor is incorrectly encoding the data.
The mailto: URL scheme is defined by RFC 2368. It defines it as:
mailtoURL = "mailto:" [ to ] [ headers ]
to = #mailbox
headers = "?" header *( "&" header )
header = hname "=" hvalue
hname = *urlc
hvalue = *urlc
"#mailbox" is as specified in RFC 822 [RFC822]. This means that it consists of zero or more comma-separated mail addresses, possibly including "phrase" and "comment" components. Note that all URL reserved characters in "to" must be encoded: in particular, parentheses, commas, and the percent sign ("%"), which commonly occur in the "mailbox" syntax.
There is no provision for removing characters such as /.