i googled around and only saw a couple of people saying that w3c doesn’t know how to follow a <a> that has “mailto:” so the error that you get when using “mailto:” : Accessing links with this URI scheme has been disabled in link checker. CAN BE ignored…
can anyone confirm that I can ignore this broken link alert? thanks much in advance :D…
thanks guys… ignore it i will because i know the mailto: address is valid
Well, it would be a “human judgement call” and the W3C Link Checker wouldn’t want to spam you would it, just to check an e-mail link structure?
So yes, you have to check it yourself for integrity and robustness. Other than that you can safely ignore it as an error; as it is not tested against, it is just highlighting “human intervention” may be needed.
The W3 link validator obviously can’t check that a mailto: link is correct without sending an email to it and waiting for a response, so it just ignores it altogether. I agree that the way it is worded is not very helpful, and doesn’t make it clear what is going on - I couldn’t see anything in the documentation that says they don’t check mailto: links, which I would have thought would have been a pretty common issue.
I think part of the issue is because mailto: is not a valid protocol on the Internet, it’s a proprietary one which has been widely adopted post Internet Explorer. It’s the same as those skypeto: protocols or the ones iTunes uses. You know that the link is perfectly valid so it really shouldn’t be worth worrying about, as long as it works. The validator is after all meant to be a tool rather than a safety net, it’s there to assist rather than comply against. 