Well, we have several alternatives in what comes to IRC Clients. Yes, IRC is still alive by the way. After all, it’s a unique protocol which allows several clients to connect one or various servers (interconnected), allow people to talk to each other in chat rooms or in private mode.
We have the usual “XChat” for windows but it’s a 30 day trial, now someone wrote a X-Chat 2, which is a completely free version for Windows with no restrictions and basically with the same functionalities (including python, ruby and TCL scripting) and pretty much configurable and you can personalize it the way you want.
This X-Chat 2 version has the following features:
- 42 language translations
- encrypted connections using OpenSSL 0.9.8j
- native IPV6 support on Windows with IPV6 Stack
- Perl, Ruby and TCL language interface plugins for scripting
- Winamp, DNS and EXEC binary plugins
- various themes with graphical theme and font utilities.
“It is compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Architect Edition on Windows XP SP2. To enable language interface plugins, you need to install respective language distributions (see Download page).”
“Comparing to official version, I use dynamically linked (a bunch of separate .dll files) GTK+ (graphical user interface library) as opposed to statically linked GTK+, where everything is in one xchat.exe file. The advantage is that you can use different themes, and not the one which has been compiled into that one xchat.exe file. GTK+ libraries are from Alex Shaduri GTK+ Runtime for Windows, so you also get GTK+ theme engines, themes and graphical theme preferences utility (in Start Menu).”
This I can tell you, I rather use X-chat2 comparing to the regular X-Chat.
Something that “bothers” me is that you have X-Chat for free on Linux, but a 30 day trial on Windows. Doesn’t make much sense for me since they are both under GLP License.
“X-Chat2 has two good features of usability: colored nicknames and alignment by text as opposed to alignment by nicks. When you read text, it's enough for eyes to notice the colors of nicknames, which they can do when they are focused to somewhere else near, and you may know at once who is writing. Colors are inobtrusive and there just 6 of them—not to burden your short-term memory. And eyes don't have to search for ends of nicknames, they can start reading text at once when text is aligned by the beginning.”
Now, let’s see it in action, shall we?
Obviously it supports multi-server so you can hang around on diferent servers and organize it by tree or tabs :-)
Also, check their Downloads page for various plugins used for scripting.
You should check out a really cool one called Digsby. I always liked it more than Pidgin, but I have never used an IRC client.
ReplyDeleteI will review Digsby as well, I also used it even though I think it's a little bit heavier on resources, but it also has a nice skinning and theme support :) Its on the list.
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