You never "e-mail" any form. The Web form is the instrument helping to send HTTP request using the method "POST" to the Web server. You always need to do some server-side programming/scripting to accept the post data, process it, convert to the data block required by e-mail standards and then do something to actually mail it.
This is another step which depends on what you host uses for mailing. Most usually, it uses SMTP protocol.
Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP[
^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_form[
^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email[
^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smtp[
^].
Is "mailto:" schema appropriate? Yes and not.
It is certainly not appropriate for Web forms (see above). But you
can use it without any form (and without any server-side programming) on you page as any other anchor with "href". In this case, the local system will try to handle it. It may open a default e-mail program on the local host. (But who knows is it set up in the user's computer or not?) Anyway, the user can simply copy the e-mail address from this link and decide what to do. This is not a concern of the Web developer.
—SA
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