Geek Culture IRC client walkthrough: EIRC (Java IRC)	Site home | Geek Culture
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Overview

The structure of this walkthrough, as with all of them, matches that of the IRC guide, providing more detailed information for the client in question. You may wish to consult with the glossary in the IRC guide for explanations of terminology not covered directly in the guide.

Getting Started with EIRC

Availability: EIRC is a Java applet – a piece of software written in the Java language that runs inside a Web page in your browser. It should run in any Web browser that has Java installed, on any operating system (although there are known problems with Netscape Navigator 4.x).

You do not install EIRC, but simply visit the SlashNET Java IRC Web page and EIRC will load inside the page. Please be aware that it can take a considerable amount of time for EIRC to download from the Web site and start up, during which you may be presented with nothing more than a white or grey rectangle. Be patient and give it time to start-up. Of course, if this delay is too long, you may prefer to download and install a regular IRC client. Another advantage of having a regular client is that it will save all of your settings; with a Java applet client, you have to go through the process shown below for every time you want to chat.

Once EIRC has loaded, it will automatically connect to the IRC network for you, and you will finish up with it looking something like the following:

Ready and waiting

EIRC didn’t know what nickname you wanted to use, so it made up a random one for you; if you look in the top-left corner of the window, you’ll see what it chose for you. It will be “Guest”, followed by some number – 46 in this case. To provide your own choice of nickname, type it into that box in place of the current nickname, and press enter. You should see it tell you that the change was successful:

A new nick is granted

The next step is to join one or more Geek Culture IRC channels; you can either use the /join command, or you can click the Join button on the toolbar at the top, and fill in the channel name into the dialog box that appears (ignore the key box):

The Join dialog

Once you click OK, you should find yourself in the channel you asked for:

#joyoftech in EIRC

Using EIRC

Getting accustomed to EIRC

A few notes about EIRC’s interface:

At the bottom, you will see two bars, marked Private and Public. These are simply button bars (like the Windows taskbar) for selecting between open channels (in Public), and private chats and the console (in Private). Note that the console is the one labelled “*Status*”. Above the inputline, you will see a facility for selecting text style and colour, although we would probably prefer that you not use that. To the right, are two buttons – Whois gets information on any user selected from the userlist above, and Close will part the channel. If you want to change your nick again for any reason, then you can do so using the box in the top-left corner, as before. The box below then toolbar at the top holds the current channel topic – you will not be able to change this, however.

Note that if new text is received in a channel or private message session that is not currently frontmost, or someone joins or parts a channel, then the text in the button bar icon turns red as illustrated below:

Activity in #joyoftech awaits your attention

Command equivalents

Other than those already mentioned, there is also the userlist contextual menu – right-click on the userlist (or command-click on the Mac), and the following menu will appear:

Userlist contextual menu

The Open Private option lets you start a private chat session with the selecter user.

Hints, tips and tricks

(none so far)

uilleann, 27th August 2003