Using an Application Client on IRC

[Naero]

I will preface this guide by stressing that it's designed strictly towards highlighting the benefits of an application client for IRC and instructional pointers for the setu-up thereof; for a more overarching guide to IRC's usage, please refer to Alex's in-depth one.

 

While IRC is deemedly optimal for our official chat—much of which you can chalk up to how ergonomic it is for its own department of staff as they utilize an array of moderational tools to ensure that the chat comports itself with PRO's intended atmosphere—its drawbacks have been considered too glaring to make it the most popular external chat. As an obsolete and developmentally stagnant chatting program, it has simply lagged behind the popularity of more visually appealing, modernistically developed chats—a la Discord—that more have naturally gravitated to.

 

Indeed, IRC also is not as intuitive by modern standards; much of that can be ascribed to the fact that it is limited on its GUI functions and requires textual commands to be sent to the chat—potentially essential commands that most of the newer IRC-users will not know off-hand. It shouldn't disabuse the consensus that IRC is still the optimum of channel control for a PRO-official chat that we haven't found with any other chatting program, but it does chasten the usership and ultimately mar how enjoyable the go-to external channel is for many avid community members.

 

That is at least the impression left by the web-client—the most readily accessible client used for IRC and thus the one used predominantly for it. Most of IRC's issues are client-side; as such, many of them can be alleviated—if not completely expunged—by different clients. It is no secret to the more experienced bevy of IRC-users that application clients are available to greatly enhance their experience, but many recede away from after short-lived stays before discovering this fact—stays that might not even be as short-lived as they are if the benefits of application clients were more well-known from the outset.

 

 

You can subsume computational clients in two sweeping categories: web- and application-based ones. As nominally suggested, web-clients are hosted on a web-server and use that to connect their users to an IRC-server, whereas application clients are downloaded to the user's OS directly and is accessed therein.

 

In order to fully know the differences between application- and web-based clients, it starts with knowing how to differentiate the client from the server itself in the transactional model to know its roles.

 

You can analogize the clients and servers to the roles of clients (customers, colloquially speaking) and the services they use in a business model; the clients are the individuals who are looking to initialize the connection with the server (the front-end personnel of the service, analogically speaking), just as you use IRC clients to establish a connection with the server. Web- and application-based clients can be seen as different vehicles for connecting to the client, and it's analogous enough to using a public-transport system (a la a bus) or your own car; web-clients (the bus) are public services that are mostly in the hands of the public (the website) and are limitedly customizable as such, whereas cars (application clients) afford you much more wiggle room to enjoy the ride to the server.

 

In the very computational application of this, however, it is affinitive enough to the transactional model between the game's own client and servers; the client accesses and utilizes your computer's resources on your own end of the connection, initializes the connection to the server, and it decides how to react when the server sends packets to it. Laymen, however, will be most interested in how it controls their computer's resources—the visual presentation it provides, the customizability, and so forth.

 

 

If you are adamant enough that you won't use IRC for the long haul or with regularity, there is the web-client's biggest advantage—that you won't spend more time setting up an application than you liekly will in using the chat on-average. Otherwise, it's in your best interest to use an application client; I will highlight why.

 

Firstly, while the modernistic motif of clients in general are sorely missed by many in IRC, this issue resonates much more commonly with web-clients than it does with application clients. Development has mostly stagnated with web-clients, but application clients have made strides—and assuredly will continue to do so—with their development.

 

As already explained but bears relevant repeating, clients control all the resources on your computer's end that serve as a happy substitute for much of what web-clients miss; this includes the following:

• More visual customizability that IRC's web-clients that your computer can be retentive of where IRC web-clients are not.
  
• Chat-logging (on your client's side).
  
• Customizability over notification systems.
  
• A much more intuitive GUI and customizability thereof to denecessitate the glut of text-based commands that you may use.
  
• Auto-performing of commands—especially useful for authenticating your nickname automatically as opposed to manually typing in the command.
  
• Better performance since it won't share the same RAM that's allotted to your web-browser, thereby easening up your habits of keeping your username parked into the chat.

 

 

Because of IRC's developer-friendly protocol, there are a multitude of IRC clients available; I will highlight the more popular ones and give instructional pointers for them below. For now, I will cover what the guides will omit as it pertains to PRO's own IRC.

 

/server irc.atomicedge.org - to connect to the RR of the IRC network. If prompted, use 6667 as the standard-protocol port or 6697 as the SSL one.

 

Once you are connected to the server, you may be prompted to join channels depending on your client; input #pro (general channel) or #pro-support (strictly used for player support) if so, or use /join #pro,#pro-support if you are not immediately prompted to join a channel.

 

Here are the more prevalent clients and all the instructional information needed to set them up.

 

-ChatZilla

-HexChat

-mIRC

[Alex8lot]

Amazing guide Naero! I hope this will bring more and more people in to join us, :). Great work my friend!

[Nindir]

Please unban me from IRC Chat. I just was trying make a few giggles. Sorry, it won't ever happen again.

:Shocked:

[Alex8lot]

229202 Please unban me from IRC Chat. I just was trying make a few giggles. Sorry, it won't ever happen again.

 

You were rude, inappropriate, and did not follow the rules. You're not getting unbanned.