connet my app to email software

[guyute]

I currenty have a MySQL/PHP application that I developed that has a few thousand records of contacts and displays them in a table.  In each row of contacts is a checkbox that allows the user to select a contact for processing.  At the bottom of the table is a pulldown list that offers different batch processes that can be run on the selected contacts. 

I would like one of the processes to be the sending of an email to a selected contact.  I would like to be able to choose the contacts and have their email addresses pre-populated in a email client and then be able to write the email.  I would like to have the features of an email client (spell checking, formatting, etc.)  I thought of doing it with a mailto function but it doesn't seem to work with many email recipients.  I thought of creating a text box for the composition of the email and then use a server side call to send the email but that does not provide the spell checking or formatting I desire.  I thought of connecting my app to an out-of-the box bulk email software but I haven't found one that I can connect to my app.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can do this?

Thanks.

[Daniel0]

Just use the [url=http://php.net/mail]mail[/url] function.

[guyute]

Using the mail function won't allow me to compose the email on the fly or to have an email client interface with spell check and formatting.  I don't see how the mail function will solve my issue.  Am I missing something here?

[redbullmarky]

as for integrating directly with an email client, i'm not totally sure - i'm sure that mailto can take more parameters, but cant for the life of me remember as i dont use it much.

however - have a look at pspell functions (http://uk2.php.net/pspell, tinymce (http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/) and phpmailer (http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/) are all relatively straightforward to set up if you wish to create something fairly simple.