IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a virtual meeting place where people from all over the world can meet and talk; you'll find the whole diversity of human interests, ideas, and issues here, and you'll be able to participate in group discussions on one of the many thousands of IRC channels, on hundreds of IRC networks, or just talk in private to family or friends, wherever they are in the world.
To use IRC you need a small application like mIRC, an IRC client for Windows that was written by Khaled Mardam-Bey. mIRC is a friendly IRC client that is well equipped with options and tools.
There is no restriction to the number of people that can participate in a given discussion, or the number of channels that can be formed on IRC. As a user you run a "client" program like mIRC which connects to a "server" in an IRC network. All servers are interconnected and pass messages from user to user over the IRC network. One server can be connected to several other servers and up to hundreds of clients.
Here are some key features of "mIRC":
· UTF-8 support with font linking.
· A powerful dynamic /help command.
· Netscape, Mosaic and MS Internet Explorer support .... surf the www waves !!
· An 'off you go' Toolbar.... and even Tooltips !
· A very handy Switchbar.
· A user programmable menu bar.
· A simple and smart CTCP commands and Events handler.
· Support for wav and midi sound files.
· Colored text to ease reading.
· Simple, fully configurable aliases.
· Configurable popup menus.
· Full DCC Send/Get/Chat support including passive DCC.
· Full configurable fonts and colors and support of bold, underline and reverse text.
· Built in Ident and Finger server.
· A simple but powerful and safe built-in File server.
· Programmable Function keys.
Requirements:
· an Internet account and a properly installed Winsock
Limitations:
· 30-day trial
· Nag screen
What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
· This version of mIRC is primarily a security release. mIRC users are advised to upgrade due to a security issue related to the use of very long nicknames on non-standard servers.
· Several other small issues have also been fixed in this release.
· Although this is a minor update, it includes important changes and all users are advised to upgrade.
