Last Updated Sun 16 Mar 2008

Stop using mIRC without paying, everybody! X-Chat is GPL and free (apart from one build). So I've made this little page about my favourite free builds.

My favourite features:

• Multi-Server by design - default action opens a new connection without closing the current.
• Really nice way of managing networks and servers.
• Auto-connect on startup and auto-join channels, done in the network/server window.
• All your server/channel/privmsg windows can be viewed in Tab-buttons or a Tree.
• Nick hilighting, custom word hilighting.
• Show everyone's name in a different colour in case some people have similar nicks and you lose your glasses.
• A red line showing where the conversation was up to when you last looked at a channel.
• It also has scripting and plugins, in case you want to annoy everybody by telling them every song you ever listen to.

If you want an installer, which provides the benefit of automatically listing the app in the registry, automatically making the start menu item which is then automatically removed when the app is uninstalled, use Silverex. The only problem I had was that the last release I used had a bug where clicking the tray icon would crash the app.

To fix that bug, get the ZeroStress[warning, site has porn links, but nothing on the page I've linked] build, and copy that straight into the x-chat folder over the top of the other files, and you'll have a working tray icon. ZeroStress also includes some extra features.

Oh, and you might need 7-Zip or IZarc to extract the ZeroStress archive. These are probably the two most useful archiving tools for Windows.

Notice: The sites I link to are external and might change without me knowing, making this page out of date and incorrect.