Open email window when clicked

Ive created a sprite and added a mouse click event with the listener as

private function sendEmail(e:MouseEvent){
            var _url:URLRequest = new URLRequest("mailto:email@email.com"); navigateToURL(_url, "_blank");
        }

is there a better way? as this acts as a popup which gets blocked and opens (in firefox) an unnecessary window (tab).
thanks
dai