Over the years, many ways of communicating surged over the internet, the first ones were IRC and e-mail, and then a fleet of Messengers appeared from nowhere a few years after. Some of those became popular, some faded out of fame and some strive. But IRC never seemed to fade away and is still widely used and very popular.
I was however surprised that I couldn’t find a good enough “eye-candy” client that suited my needs. mIRC is 10 years old and when you look at it it still looks primitive, surely there must be a client that fits my needs somewhere.
Here’s my idea of what the perfect client should have:
- Themes
- Scripts (advanced but also a novice way of doing them)
- Customizable Interface (and I don’t mean just hide and show things)
- Smiley Replacement (preferably PNGs)
- Eye-Candy (I’m willing to pay some memory)
- Support for different Charsets
I’m aware that Gaim, Trillian, Miranda and the like all have IRC plugins which in some cases fill most of my suggestions for the perfect client but most of them fail scripting and customizing-wise and I’d prefer something standalone than a jack of all trades (unless it’s exceptional of course).
Here are my reviews of the clients I’ve used or tried over the years from 1 to 5 asterisks:
mIRC (****) – It was the first; many claim it’s the best and it is what started IRC for common users, there’s an almost infinite array of plugins, scripts and stuff for it. It fails miserably on the eye-candy.
XChat (***) – Has a slightly nicer interface in my opinion and is simpler options-wise.
Chatzilla (****) – Has a very nice Main Window, with PNG smileys, has themes, has charset support (even though it wasn’t in the options and I had to do it with a command) but scripting wise I haven’t given it a go yet. But it’s lacking a lot of options and you can’t change the interface very much. It’s main flaw is not being independent from FireFox, but only a Plugin (you can’t install new plugins or themes without closing it down also)
Basically I wish there was something to unite a little bit of those three. mIRC has all the options you can think of and changes the interface pretty well, XChat is simple but a bit limited, Chatzilla is not FireFox independent.
What do you suggest?
On PC I use mIRC just because it’s what I have always used and I am used to it.
On my mac, I go back and forth. Lately I have been using Colloquy a lot, but have also been trying out Conversation and XChat.
I’ve always used mIRC w/ ircN. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
ircN 7.27 has been used 256 times for 21w 3d 7h 50m online. Currently on deviantART – Up for 2days 10hrs 40mins 36secs. Currently Wed, Mar 09 2005 at 8:17pm.
Heh.
I have been using Trillian. No major reason other than it is one less program I need to keep running.
I’m with Mike on this. Trillian just fits nicely. No extra program, the “skin” i have for it is nice, and I don’t really need charsets and extra pngs (i turn it off anyway)
I use ChatZilla. I like the way I can use my existing JavaScript/CSS skills to customize it.
Built-in SSL support is a nice extra.
Character encoding is on the general tab, under “Connections”. (Though I like the way you can access everything with commands.)
A standalone ChatZilla is planned, and there’s a Windows build for an old version (0.9.66), but the XULRunner stuff in Mozilla needs a lot of work before it’ll be ready.
easy I use xchat on windows/linux/OSX and I use irssi with linux more than I use xchat.
I like xchat cause its simple and uses perl for scripting Mirc annoys with its overly bulky scripts and crap.
Hm, may just be me, but X-Chat seems quite sluggish on my machine. I mean, I can actually see it redrawing the window when I switch to it.
bitchx it’s very eye candy, and as a very nice interface.
Just don’t forget do read de manual first.
irssi on Unix/Linux/OSX is my choice. I’ve been using that client for 3 years now and I think there is no need for switching.
irssi of course.
When stuck on Windows, open putty to a shell where irssi is kept running with dtach.
bx users should switch to irssi. It’s a whole new world.
Oh also, add bitlbee and you have IM and IRC together.
blah blah blah
My favorite one on Windows is by far klient
http://www.klient.com
nice interface support for a lot of scripting languages… give it a try.
http://www.sysreset.com
best one out there in my opinion
IRC… haven’t used that in years.
When using a GTK based desktop (Gnome) xChat is the best client to use as it looks like another standard program (I can’t stand programs that use their own themes).
Oh, and people that use scripts give me the shits, unless its a channel admin related script.
XChat.
Still using my own client. 0irc. ;)
I like it plain and simple.
Cheers murphy
Try AcidMax it’s a script for mIRC but it comes with everything already installed so you just go to the website download it and install it with no having to load the scripts yourself. It has all the nice features of mIRC (SSL Support, Scripting all that stuff) with lots of eye candy and extra functionality.
http://www.team-nexgen.com
I Use Chatzill on both Windows and Fedora Linux.
Its cool.. I even used Mirc with a few Scripts like Cyclone etc.. Still i prefer Chatzill. It has got everything i need. Easy access, Cool interface, Customizable motifs, Scripts, Tabbed browseing …cool
Will my personal information be public if I post here?
Being a part of the ExcursionX Scripting Team I prefer Excursion lol…If Im on freebsd, then xchat, simple enough
I suggest you use KVIrc. It has many features, and looks great, too. Different themes, tons of smileys…try it out.
MZirc is absolutely free and full featured, try it