2008-07-19, 08:29 PM
IRC is a protocol - it's similar to a chat room on AIM or MSN, except it's fundamentally different. It's not structured in the same way.
You connect to these things called networks and they have tons of channels. You can join as many channels as you want. The way the network identifies you is by nickname. You can have as many nicknames as you want, but any given nickname can only be used at a time on each network. So it's kind of like MSN where you can change your name to whatever you want. Channels are like the equivalent of chat rooms.
mIRC is an IRC client - it has features that revolve around connecting and interacting with IRC networks. It's technically shareware, but more like freeware with a nag. It supports its own built-in scripting language which really can be extended to do pretty much anything you want since it supports DLL calls and what have you.
The reasons why I chose mIRC are because it's light on resources and space (compared to Excel), the script is inherently open source (you can't use a script that doesn't have the code right in front of you), and I'm very familiar with mIRC script. Plus, you can't give things an interface with Excel, which I felt was a no-no.
You can pick up the latest version of mIRC at http://www.mirc.com. I upgraded from 6.03 this week and haven't found any issues with my script, so I'm pretty sure it's okay.
You connect to these things called networks and they have tons of channels. You can join as many channels as you want. The way the network identifies you is by nickname. You can have as many nicknames as you want, but any given nickname can only be used at a time on each network. So it's kind of like MSN where you can change your name to whatever you want. Channels are like the equivalent of chat rooms.
mIRC is an IRC client - it has features that revolve around connecting and interacting with IRC networks. It's technically shareware, but more like freeware with a nag. It supports its own built-in scripting language which really can be extended to do pretty much anything you want since it supports DLL calls and what have you.
The reasons why I chose mIRC are because it's light on resources and space (compared to Excel), the script is inherently open source (you can't use a script that doesn't have the code right in front of you), and I'm very familiar with mIRC script. Plus, you can't give things an interface with Excel, which I felt was a no-no.
You can pick up the latest version of mIRC at http://www.mirc.com. I upgraded from 6.03 this week and haven't found any issues with my script, so I'm pretty sure it's okay.