It’s time for you to learn how to save yourself a lot of time at every startup and automate the process of joining your favorite IRC servers and channels. This is, by the way, another reason why HydraIRC is the superior client to those of you who are new to the chat universe. Creating “scripts” is incredibly simple and intuitive.

Let’s start off by going into the Options menu and clicking Prefs…. A window of preferences should then pop up for you.

On the left, click Scripts. At this point, you should see a single option of “SomeNetwork_OnLoggedIn“.

In my screenshot, you’ll see many more because I’ve set up autojoins on several servers. Nonetheless, this is an example script profile that HydraIRC has created for you. Using it alone, some users can gauge how to set up their scripts. You can learn a little more about command/script profiles on the official website, but let me do some basic explaining.

HydraIRC has three built-in profile name suffixes that trigger the program to automatically execute a script. These three are as follows:

• OnStartUp, which will execute the script immediately when the application is launched.
• OnLoggedIn, which will execute the script when you have joined a particular server.
• OnJoin, which will execute the script when you join a particular channel.

By creating profiles with the names “OnStartUp”, “{SERVER}_OnLoggedIn”, or “~{SERVER}_{CHANNEL}_OnJoin”, you are authorizing HydraIRC to automatically execute the scripts during those conditions. If we wanted a script to automatically execute when we join the EFNet server, we’d name the profile “EFNet_OnLoggedIn“. If we wanted to execute the script only when we join the #chat channel on EFNet, we’d name it “~EFNet_#chat_OnJoin“.

Let’s go over an example. We’ll use GameSurge, as we did in my first post. By default, it is included with HydraIRC. On the server list, it is given the exact name “GameSurge” (which will need to be exact, case sensitive, in the profile name).

On Gamesurge, we’d like to automatically join #sourcemod, #gamesurge, and #linux when we connect. So we’ve done the hard part. Now here’s our script, “GameSurge_OnLoggedIn”:

/quietjoin sourcemode,gamesurge,linux

It’s very simple. The “/quietjoin” command is ideal when you’re joining multiple channels at once as it softens each join. Afterwards, the channel names (pound signs are not required) delimited by commas.

Now what if you want to automatically join GameSurge every time you launch HydraIRC? That’s simple also. Your script profile would be “OnStartUp”:

/server irc.gamesurge.net

That’s it. At this point, when you start HydraIRC you’d now automatically connect to the GameSurge server and automatically join those three channels. Do you want to connect to multiple servers on startup? Just add a new line with the following (with FreeNode in this example):

/newserver irc.freenode.net

Every power IRC uses user scripts. Automation is one of my favorite things in the world, and you’ll find that automating certain parts of your chatting experience will allow you to do what you came to do – enjoy it. If I’ve still been unable to convince you that HydraIRC is the way to go, check out a few interesting scripts for mIRC.

Holler at me in the comments if you’re having trouble or want to share any more useful scripts for the IRC platform.

I’m not even going to pretend. I was 5 or 6 years old back in 1995 so this is well before my time, too. In the age of social networking and Internet 2.0, web-based chat rooms are practically dead. They’re all but done with; on the endangered list. Still, IRC is the most popular server/client chat protocol in the world. Maybe the rooms aren’t as active as they were 10+ years ago, but we’ve still got a pulse!

Some boredom and curiosity mixed well together and I’ve rediscovered IRC just recently. Now, I’d like to show you how to use my favorite IRC client, HydraIRC. There are a lot of multi-IM clients (like Trillian) that support the IRC protocol, but nothing really beats the efficiency and oldschool feel of a standalone chat client. You’ve probably heard of mIRC, the most popular IRC client, but here’s a few reasons why I love Hydra:

• It is portable. Download the ZIP and extract it to wherever you like. Put it in your Dropbox or on a flash drive. Portable applications beat out self-installing packages every day of the week.
• It is lightweight. mIRC is a little bulky for me.
• It is free. Everyone loves things that are free.
• It supports everything that you need in an IRC client: multiple servers, DCC, event logs, channel monitoring, an extremely flexible GUI, and more.

You can check out some more, official screenshots at the official HydraIRC website.

Anyway, rusty IRC legend or complete newbie, let’s get you started. Get HydraIRC downloaded. Next step is to figure out where you want to chat and what about, right? You want to go into the File menu, then New Server. Hydra comes preloaded with loads of the most popular IRC servers.

Now it’s on you to pick the network (and associated server) that you want. You can either query up Google and learn a bit about each, or experience can guide you. FreeNode has tons of channels for coding, tech support, general hacking, networking, and things of that nature. EFNet is your oldschool “general” server. QuakeNet and GameSurge are for gamers, and so on.
For this example, let’s go ahead and go on GameSurge. Double click GameSurge, click the IRC server that expands beneath it, and then click OK to connect.

Every server consists of many channels (or rooms). Upon connecting, the Channel List window will pop up. If it doesn’t, you can click into the Channel menu and then Channel List. Click Populate List and after a second, you’ll have a list of every channel on the server. Click the Users header once and you’ll have sorted the channels by the most users. Scroll through, see if there are any you may be interested in, and then click Join.

This is how you join an IRC server and a channel (the easy way). There are hundreds and hundreds of servers out there and thousands of channels. There’s probably an active channel for just about any subject that comes to mind. It’s good to have it sitting in your taskbar for idle moments in between tasks.

If you need any help or want to dive deeper into the subject, let’s chat in the comments. If you really like IRC chatting, consider setting up your own IRC channel and read our post on that.

What makes Quassel IRC different is its client/server architecture. A typical IRC chat client is just that, a client. When you disconnect your client or end your program, you are disconnected from IRC. Quassel really brings IRC chat to the next level. It splits your IRC client into two parts – the “client” and the “core”. The core is actually what connects to the external IRC servers – your client simply connects to the core and from there, you access IRC networks.

So why bother with a 24/7 client? It is very beneficial to catch up on what has been going on since the last time you connected. For developers this means that you can see past discussions, for business it lets you keep up on what is going on. There are many reasons. However I think you will agree with me that once you learn about 24/7 IRC chat, you won’t want to go back to the old ways.

First you download the “core” application on a PC that you leave running all of the time. This PC can be a server or it can be a regular computer that you leave on 24/7. I have this running on a server in a data center so that the connection to the internet and server uptime are rock solid. They have both the core and client available for Windows, Linux and Mac – also the source code is freely available.

After running the core, you have your client to setup and configure. All configuration of the ‘core’ server is done via the client on another PC (or on the same PC, it does not matter at this point which computer the client is running on). Upon first connection to the server, it will give you the option to “Launch Wizard” to setup the core.

Once your Quassel user is set up, you can authenticate to the core. Next up will be setting up your identity. Later on you can even have separate identities for each IRC chat network that you connect to! For now, enter your username and other information and continue. By default it will connect you to Freenode but you can connect to any network you want, or multiple IRC networks.

For added security between your client and core, you can encrypt the connection. Quassel core has SSL capability added in, or if you have a Hamachi network set up you can use the IP address of your Core server for the hostname (the port is 4242).

I’ve been using Quassel for over a year now and it is definately a project to watch. mIRC is the most popular IRC chat client, but I’ve found that Quassel is just as good, and as stable. It is a great way to manage your connections to multiple IRC networks while maintaining your connectivity. It is being actively developed so look for more features such as scripting coming out soon!

And just to address the command line lovers out there – I wanted to note that this has been possible for a long time on the command line side using something like screen and irssi. However the ability to have a remote, stable connection for GUI users has been a long time coming.

Do you use Quassel? Or do you have another preferred IRC client? Let us know all about it in the comments.

Get: Quassel.

Here’s a list of 10 essential software apps for web development on a Mac.

10. TextWrangler is a multipurpose text editor that works for editing code and plain text documents. It can even open files from (and save them to) remote FTP and SFTP servers.

9. Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator. It is the first open source program to adopt Spiro curves. You can also go through their clip art collection and find dozens of images made with Inkscape that are free to use or modify.

8. Cyberduck is the all-in-one FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDav and Mosso Cloud Files browser application. Web developers often need to switch between different file systems, and Cyberduck does this without a hiccup. It works with Textmate (which has a free 30 day trial), so you can open files from Cyberduck in Textmate, edit, save and upload. Read more about FTP clients for Mac here.

7. Gimp is the second-most popular photo editing software program on the market, second only to Adobe Photoshop. The difference? Gimp is absolutely free! You can do just about everything in Gimp that you can do in Adobe Photoshop, so web developers will find this a welcome and wallet friendly addition to their software arsenal.

6. Aptana takes up where Textmate leaves off in some aspects. It is a full featured code editor, but adds the FTP support of Cyberduck, as well as important web technologies like Ajax, Adobe AIR and PHP. Read more about Aptana here on MUO.

5. Firefox is a must have for web development because of three great add-ons – Firebug, the Web Developer toolbar and ColorZilla. Firebug lets you edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page; while the Web Developer toolbar adds additional tools like clearing cookies, disable CSS, display ruler and display source. ColorZilla lets you pick colors from websites or images online, so you can match them to your web designs, plus measure the distance between two points on a website.

4. JAlbum helps you make attractive photo galleries for websites. JAlbum comes with various templates built-in, but you can also customize your own template to better match a web project you’re working on. Read about 5 more Excellent Mac Apps for Graphic & Web Design

3. Colloquy is a basic IRC client that every web developer will use at one point or another. Many web platforms use IRC for support, including WordPress.

2. MAMP is what you need to manage websites locally when you are without an internet connection or want to test changes without making them live on a website. It is easy to install MAMP and have access to Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X. It is also a stand-alone program, so if you need to install it, it won’t interfere with your OSX installation. Plus, you can use it to install WordPress on your Mac.

1. iTerm is a feature-filled Terminal emulator for OSX. You can bookmark your frequently used sessions, have tabbed windows with multiple sessions and more.

Do you have any suggestions for better similar apps? Let’s hear them in the comments!

Installing phpFreeChat

• Grab the latest phpfreechat-x.x-setup.php at Sourceforge (1.2 is the latest version at the time of this writing).
• Upload it or move it to a local web server directory. We’re going to be using a XAMPP installation, so we’ve moved it to the root directory. You don’t want to put the install file where you want the chat to be.
• Navigate to the file. Our URL would be http://localhost/phpfreechat-1.2-setup.php. You’ll be greeted with a Pre-Install Check. Hopefully it looks like the picture below. Hit ‘Next’.



• You’ll be prompted for an install path. By default it creates a phpfreechat directory in the current directory, but you can change it to whatever you wish. Hit ‘Next’.



• It’ll ask you to confirm the install. Click ‘Next’. Watch the pretty progress bar. Once it’s finished, click ‘Next’.
• It’ll have installed itself in the directory of your choice, ours being http://localhost/phpfreechat/. Do as it says and delete the phpfreechat-x.x-setup.php file.

Quick Configuration

Setting up the Admin Account

The equivalent of an IRC channel op, the admin password allows you to gain access to privileges such as kicking, banning, and viewing user IP addresses. Admin status is global across all channels.

Prompt for Nickname Upon Entry

By default, the chat assigns you a nickname guest followed by random numbers. To force the user to choose a nickname when they enter:

Remove Censor and Flood Protection

Think of a channel as an individual “room” on a larger IRC server, usually dedicated to a certain topic or organization. Your own mileage may vary. To create and access IRC, you’ll need an IRC client like any on this list. I’ll be using the ChatZilla extension for Firefox.

If you’re new, I suggest reading IRC Help before jumping in.

You’ll notice that ChatZilla presents you upon startup with links to some popular networks. For the purposes of this demonstration, I connected to Freenode, however due to its policies against off-topic channels, I suggest using the Foonetic server instead. Just type “/server irc.foonetic.net” to connect to it.

Chances are, your initial username will be taken and you’ll be given something like “Tim____”. You can change your nickname with the command “/nick NickName” (no quotes). If you plan on using your channel often, you may wish to reserve your chosen nickname with a password. You can do this with a command in the format “/msg nickserv register password email@address“. When you return to the server later, you may login with “/msg nickserv identify password“.

Now that you’ve got your nickname registered, it’s time to create your channel. This can be done with the command “/join channelname“. The channel name can be any old nonsense. Try to make sure that your channel name is unique so that you don’t drop into another channel unannounced.

Once you’re in your channel, you have the option to register the channel, in order to maintain operator “(op)” status in the channel. To do so, your command is “/msg chanserv REGISTER #channelname password description“, replacing words when appropriate.

I’ve created a channel for #MakeUseOf on the Foonetic server, and anyone is welcome to drop in and say hi. Have fun with the old-school chit-chat!

Do you have a favorite IRC client or server to suggest? Let us know in the comments.

BrowserPlus allows developers to create dynamic web apps that mirror the functionality of desktop programs. As of now, community developers do not have access to the code, but everyone gets a sneak peek into three useable Yahoo BrowserPlus demos and what it can offer.

1. BrowserPlus PhotoDrop

The first app that you can demo is PhotoDrop, which is basically a Flickr upload tool. It does everything that you expect, such as batch editing of tags, simple photo editing tools, and effects. However, what’s great about using BrowserPlus for an app like this is the ability for you to drag and drop photos from your desktop straight into your browser. This added functionality really adds to the ease of use of the app, and is just one of the many services BrowerPlus offers (you can check the API of some of the services offered by BrowserPlus here http://browserplus.yahoo.com/services/).

2. IRC Client

The next one you can demo is an IRC client. This IRC client is fast, easy to use and looks great running in your browser, as the UI is purely AJAX. Another great feature that BrowserPlus shows off through this IRC client is built-in text-to-speech as well as desktop notifications.

3. JSON Inspector

The last app that you can demo would be more useful to developers, rather than the average internet user. It’s a browser-based JSON inspector, which is useful for cross-platform developers as they are in the processing of accepting web standards.

Well everyone, there you have it. Yahoo BrowserPlus seems promising, with its variety of useful services and tools. I’ll be excited to see what powerful and functional webapps gets created when developers get their hands on the code.

(By) David is a creative individual trying to find his place in this world. Visit his tech blog, Beta Cubed – B^3