i/s Back Issues

Volume 13

No. 5  May/June 1998

Computer Corner

This column presents news and tips from the consultants who staff the Computing Help Desk. Check out their Web home page at http://web.mit.edu/helpdesk/.

Q: I use Netscape Navigator as my Web browser and have encountered a problem. Some Web pages have links for sending email ‚ for example, to contact the maintainer of a page. When I click on this type of link, I get an email window. But then, when I type in my message and try to send it, I get an error message. Why doesn't this work?

A: The version of Navigator distributed at MIT doesn't have a built-in email program. When Navigator encounters a "mailto" link, it doesn't know which email program to launch to send the message. You need to configure Navigator so that "mailto" links are mapped to your email program. For most users at MIT, that email program is Eudora.

If you use a Macintosh with Mac OS 7.5 or higher, you can run an applet that tells Navigator to use Eudora for mailto links. This applet is on the Mac OS 8 CD distributed by IS. To get this free CD, present your MIT ID at the MIT Computer Connection in W20-021.

Once you have the Mac OS CD, open the Netscape folder, then the Netscape Extras folder, and finally the Tell Netscape to use Eudora folder. Within it is an About file with installation instructions, as well as the applet itself. Once you've run the applet, you won't need to run it again unless you install a new version of Navigator.

If you work on a Windows machine running Eudora 3, you may not encounter the Navigator mailto link problem. Eudora 3 for Windows has a default setting ‚ "Intercept Netscape mailto URLs" that sets up a link between Eudora and Navigator. (You can find this setting by going to the Tools menu, selecting Options, then choosing Miscellaneous.) In order for this default to work, Eudora 3 must be open at the time you click the mailto link.

If you use Eudora 2 on a Windows machine, there is no way to set Eudora to launch automatically when you click on a Web mailto link.

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