Comments on: Spam, e-mail addresses and contact forms: are you making these usability mistakes?

By: Matt Beeman

Matt Beeman — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:08:40 +0000

I agree with Dunc, there is not an accessibility problem with the contact form, it is different from their e-mail, but a contact form is not for sending an e-mail, it is for getting information, just because it happens to send an e-mail doesn’t make it an e-mail.

The contact form is far and away the best issue to save you from receiving spam if you are doing it correctly, as it all has to come through the contact form. Spammers still try to spam the contact form, but since they think it’s a blog, then they do blog spamming, which includes lots of links, which is very easily filtered.

By: James Davis

James Davis — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:30:29 +0000

As in the article, forms are useful when you require particular pieces of information from your user. What they’re not so good at is generic communications.

If the action of a hyperlink isn’t clear to the user then I suspect that the design of the site isn’t clear; not that mailto: URLs are inherently bad.

By: Dunc

Dunc — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:35:34 +0000

So you’re basically saying that a mailto: link is better than a contact form?

Are you serious?

Think about this:

The user clicks a link saying “Contact Us”

Option 1 - they’re taken to an online contact form which shows them which information is required and which is optional. This removes the possibility of the user forgetting a piece of important information, which would then require the site owner to email them back requesting it.

Plus, perhaps the user has a different email which they use when contacting website. Here they can choose to enter it.

For business purposes the email can easily be stored in a database for future data analysis.

Option 2 - in the worst case, the link isn’t identified as a mailto: link and the user gets a not so pleasant surprise when they click the link and their mail client opens. The same is true of other links that don’t identify themselves correctly, such as pdf’s and Word documents.

Any hyperlinks which open an external application should make this clear to the user, without the user having to mouseover the link to check the filename in the link.

By: prefabrik konut

prefabrik konut — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:58:22 +0000

I think It’s a good idea but if your browser can display your address correctly - I’m sure the spammers can work it out.

By: otogaz

otogaz — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 15:26:06 +0000

otogazt’s a good idea but if your browser can display your address correctly - I’m sure the spammers can work it out.

By: Carlo

Carlo — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:21:08 +0000

James: I think it mostly works. Spammers don’t spend much time on not-trivial parsing.

By: James Davis

James Davis — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:26:53 +0000

Contact forms have their place but I don’t feel that they are a replacement for e-mail.

By: cerrahi

cerrahi — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:24:50 +0000

I also use contact form in my website which I think is the best solution to hide e-mail address.

By: James Davis

James Davis — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:22:00 +0000

It’s a good idea but if your browser can display your address correctly - I’m sure the spammers can work it out.

By: Carlo

Carlo — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:07:39 +0000

What about using the script and techniques I described here

http://perassi.org/2007/09/24/an-accessible-email-cloaking-technique/

Thank you.