Warning! Better Gmail 2 and Constant Contact Do Not Mix!

I use Gmail for my work email, and Better Gmail 2 extension to convert mailto: links into handy Gmail-enabled links. It works via javascript and, until today, has never caused any problems for me.

Today I put the finishing touches on a client’s email campaign (using Con, and all appeared to be well. After sending the email out, we noticed a problem: all the email links were pointing to gmail.com. WTF?

Turns out that the editor in Constant Contact uses javscript to edit and save a DOM element on-the-fly; so, when Better Gmail changes the mailto: links to a Gmail-friendly URL, the changes the script makes are saved by Constant Contact.

I never noticed the change, because the links looked to me like every other mailto: link on the page: nicely changed for my convenience. The problem was obscured during the final testing of the email.

This is not a problem inherent in Better Gmail or in Constacnt Contact, but it sure makes me look like a jackass to have all the mailto: links broken on an otherwise perfectly good email.

Remember: Extensions are code executed on web pages and even though it’s not obvious, these scripts can interfere with other scripts on the same page!