IRC Client

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An IRC Client is a software program used to connect to an Internet Relay Chat network, such as MIXXnet. Below is a list of popular IRC clients for various platforms.

Graphical Clients

Cross-Platform

• XChat: Created by Peter Zelenzy, XChat is a free, open source, and multi-platform IRC client with a graphical user interface. There are builds for various *nix distributions, Mac OS X, and Windows. www.xchat.org (Note: The "official" Windows builds are not free. To see a list of completely free Windows builds, go here).

• Quassel: Quassel is an open source and cross-platform distributed IRC client. Its unique feature is the ability to attach and detach the graphical client portion from the core, similar to running screen and a text based client. quassel-irc.org

• KVIrc: KVIrc is another open source and cross-platform IRC client based on the QT toolkit. There are binaries available for Unix, OS X, and Windows. www.kvirc.de

• Pidgin: Pidgin is an open source, cross-platform application that combines many chat networks (includng IRC) into one program. pidgin.im

• Opera: The excellent Opera web browser also has a simple built-in IRC client. There are versions available for various platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris. www.opera.com

Mac OS X Specific

• Colloquy: Colloquy is a free and open source graphical client with a slick Mac-inspired interface for Mac OS X. colloquy.info

• Snak (Shareware): Snak is an IRC client for Macintosh OS X. It has several features and is actively developed. Snak is shareware ($29). www.snak.com

• Ircle (Shareware): Another IRC client for Mac. Ircle runs on Mac OS 7.2 through 9.0.x, as well as Mac OS X 10.1 or newer. Ircle is shareware (19 €). www.ircle.com

Windows Specific

• mIRC (Shareware): Khaled Mardam-Bey released the first version of mIRC on February 28, 1995. mIRC is a graphical IRC client for the Windows platform with it's own scripting language. mIRC is shareware, so to legally run it past 30 days without nag screens you need a $20 license. www.mirc.com

Text Clients

Cross-Platform

• Irssi: Irssi is a popular open source and free text based IRC client. Irssi is different from BitchX because it does not use the old ircII code. Irssi also supports Perl scripting and runtime modules, so it is highly customizable. There are binaries available for several operating systems including Mac OSX and Windows. www.irssi.org

• WeeChat: WeeChat is an open source text based client with some advanced features like multiple interface capability, horizontal and vertical window splitting, nickname list, smart "hotlist" in the status bar to show channel activity by name, highlighting without switching channels, and spell checking. weechat.flashtux.org

• BitchX: BitchX is another popular open source text based IRC client for UNIX. It started out as a script for the ircII client, but then panasync patched the script directly into the actual client in 1994. There are binaries for many operating systems including Windows. www.bitchx.org

Web-Based Clients

Mibbit

Mibbit is a popular and feature rich AJAX client which allows users to easily connect to IRC from any web browser without plugins or special firewall requirements. Webmasters can create a Mibbit Widget to embed the chat application on their website. Please note that Mibbit is an externally hosted service so we have no control over its operation or reliability, though we do recommend it for its ease of use, good interface/features, and overall stability. mibbit.com

MIXXnet fully supports connecting through Mibbit on all servers, and Mibbit users will have their real hostnames shown on the network. "irc.mixxnet.net" must be used in the "server" parameter to allow users' real hostnames to show up.

lightIRC

lightIRC is a freeware Flash IRC client with a clean and easy to use interface. Website admins can host the files on their own server or add an br to existing files on lightIRC's server. This client requires users to have the Adobe Flash plugin enabled in their browser which can limit compatibility as there is not official Flash support for all operating systems/browsers. lightirc.com

Below are a few notes and recommendations for using lightIRC on MIXXnet:

• All MIXXnet servers in the main rotation have support for lightIRC, however the "policyPort" parameter must be set to "6843" for the application to properly connect. (params.policyPort = 6843)

• We recommend setting the "ident" parameter on lightIRC to the name of your channel as the default random string may cause users to be incorrectly identified as malicious bots. (params.ident = "yourchanname")

• The "nickAlternate" parameter should be set to prevent lightIRC from rapidly reconnecting if the nickname is in use. (params.nickAlternate = "Guest_%")