OBVIOUSLY
<a href="mailto:zzz@zzz.com">Send Mail</a>
Well, no so fast; a couple days ago I was talking to my project manager about that; she said that this was not user-friendly and lead to unexpected behavior for those don't use Email Clients (e.g: Windows Users will prompt to use Outlook, nobody uses it - that I know -). I told her that since "Internet was born" this is the way we do things and for mobile users, for example, this the best way to access the email. Anyway, she said that is to copy the email address on click event instead of using the mailto: attribute
Now here I'm, asking you guys, what's the best way to use email links in websites? Is it useful to copy the email address? Is it better use mailto:? Or do you have any another idea?
I don't think there is a right way or a wrong way, just which way works best for the target audience / layout of the site.
On mobile, it can be a bit of a pain to copy text; so I'd use a mailto:
On desktop, you may find users don't use a program to check their email (I still go directly to gmail.google.com) so clicking a mailto: might open the default mail app which might not be configured.
If the layout allows (ie: you can have a contact us page) just use a form. The backend can store it in a DB or just send an email to whoever - either way, this reduces bots scraping your site for email addresses and allows the user to stay on the page and just fill in a short form to contact you.
I haven't used a desktop email client since webmail became a thing. That said, I can right click on any mailto link and copy the email address that way. Less computer-savy people won't know to do that though and WILL wonder why the email link isn't working. Generally you want to provide the email address in the text:
<a href="mailto:zzz@zzz.com">zzz@zzz.com</a>
Bots will spam you, but that's what spam filters are for. They'll spam you by reading the source code mailto:zzz part of the link link anyways.
I know by the experience, posting an email address in a website is a bad idea, because of the spam bots and spiders recollect information of all the webs and you can have a big quantity of spam messages in your inbox.
I think the best way is to make a form contact in the web, so light, user friendly and usable for the user that keep it easy to use.
For other side if you need to put an email on your web maybe use something to autocopy yout email, or using some techniques to hidde from bots.
if you don't use mailto: , you are being un-semantic as the link with mailto is meaningful tag.
I like the idea they have, but only offer that as an option on the side, do not change from your mailto: link.
What happens on the users machine, is down to how the user has their machine setup.... not to how you have marked-up a link.
Michael Hausenblas
Distributed Systems Jester
Show your manager RFC6068—it's an Internet standard and not something you or your project manager decide (FWIW, neither do I ;).