Casting Votes / Making a Poll

**egrove12** · 26 June 2013, 03:07 PM

Hi - would appreciate any advice you all have on this... I'm creating a site with Xara Designer Pro X in which people can choose which of 2 quotes is more meaningful to them. I would like users to be able to click the quote of their choice and somehow have that selection tabulated somewhere (a spreadsheet in Google Drive, etc...). Any ideas on how to do this without using a widget (i'd prefer to avoid using widgets as I don't want my art design interrupted)? If not possible without a widget, any recommendations as to which widget to use? Again, the questions will be completely binary, as in "is quote A or quote B better".
thanks!

**Acorn** · 26 June 2013, 05:18 PM

I shall assume that you do not have access to PHP and a server-side scripting environment.

If you are not using a Widget, the only simple method would be to create two links or buttons that are predefined emails:

mailto:yourmailbox@com?subject=Quote%20A
and
mailto:yourmailbox@com?subject=Quote%20B

You would then have to tally emails received and update your site accordingly.

Acorn

**gwpriester** · 26 June 2013, 05:29 PM

Excellent solution Acorn

**egrove12** · 26 June 2013, 06:23 PM

Thanks for the advice Acorn. Just to make sure I understand... If I want to use your predefined emails suggestion, would create a button and then go to web properties --> placeholder --> replace with HTML code (body) --> then paste in "mailto:yourmailbox@com?subject=Quote%20A" (obviously replacing "yourmailbox" with my email address)? Just want to make sure I can correctly implement your idea.

**Acorn** · 26 June 2013, 07:13 PM

No, you add the mail detail directly into the button as Web Properties > Link > Link to Web or Email address.
Yes, to your substituting the email address. Ideally, this should be an aliased account and not your primary address to cut down on spammers.
That said, i have added by business email on many sites and my ISP generally winnows them out. There are simple, short JavaScript utilities that can disguise an email from scrapers and bots.

Acorn

**jamesd** · 26 June 2013, 09:06 PM

As far as I know Xara automatically encrypts email links

**Boy** · 26 June 2013, 09:28 PM

A downside to the 'mailto' approach is that the visitor to your website needs a local email client installed and configured on their computer. Many people, such as myself, use web-based email clients so such links would not work for them.

**steve.ledger** · 26 June 2013, 09:35 PM

Well, you can set this, Boy.
My default email is Gmail. mailto: links open up a page and log me into gmail.
► https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10966?hl=en

You can also do similar with Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

**jamesd** · 26 June 2013, 10:01 PM

You could also do this with a simple form... Option A, Option B and Submit

**Boy** · 27 June 2013, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by sledger

Well, you can set this, Boy.
My default email is Gmail. mailto: links open up a page and log me into gmail.
► https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10966?hl=en

You can also do similar with Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

Thanks for clarifying that, Steve, but I use another webmail service that does not allow this. Of course I could set things up differently through one of the web services you mentioned but I do not really see the immediate need for this.

My point was that probably many other people do not have the 'mailto' feature configured properly either so that the polling solution Acorn proposed will not work in those cases.