Geek Culture IRC client walkthrough: JoyChat	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 JoyChat

Availability: JoyChat is available for Mac OS X, from stonewallcs.com.

Note: There are bugs in JoyChat which cause incoming private messages to show as regular channel messages. Please take appropriate precautions to avoid replying to such messages directly to the channel.

JoyChat is a simplified IRC client which limits the extent to which you need to either configure it or understand how IRC works; thus, the set-up procedure is pretty simple. On loading the client, you will be asked for a nickname to use on the network:

Nickname selection

With that entered, all you need do to start chatting is to click Connect in the main window; you will then see lots of messages appear in the chat pane as JoyChat connects to the IRC network, which you can ignore (unless there is a problem). Once connecting is completed, the main window will look something like this:

Ready and waiting

The main clue that connecting was successful is seeing everyone’s names down the right-hand side of the window. You are are now ready to begin chatting.

Using JoyChat

Getting accustomed to JoyChat

A few notes about the window: the four icons on the right-hand side of the toolbar, to the left of the separator, are Web links, to geekculture.com, the Forums, the IRC info page, and the IRC statistics, respectively. The Options icon brings up a drawer for working with other IRC users:

The options drawer

The info window

The buttons in the Users tab all work on the currently selected user from the userlist. The four top buttons are self-explanatory, but the bottom three are less so. Ping times how long it takes to send a piece of data to that person and back (to check for lag); Time tells you what the time is where that person is; Version tells you the name and version of the IRC client the person is using. Further CTCP options are available from the userlist contextual menu. “CTCP” itself stands for “Client-to-Client Protocol”, in case you were wondering.

The Buddies tab contains your buddy list – JoyChat will notify you with a fanfare sound when people in this list enter the channel. (For the knowledgeable – this is not the same as ISON (/notify) notification.)

Note that unlike other IRC clients, you are restricted to the #joyoftech channel (which it calls “JoyChat” in the text that comes up when you connect).

Command equivalents

JoyChat doesn’t seem to know many IRC commands actually, so you won’t have that much luck trying to use them – stick to the graphical interface. Something you may want to use is the userlist contextual menu – ctrl-click (or right-click) on the userlist to invoke it:

Userlist contextual menu

You may notice that there are two extra CTCP options, Music and Mac Info. When used with certain IRC clients (JoyChat included), Mac Info will return details about the other person’s Macintosh. With certain set-ups (probably Mac/iTunes only, but quite which I do not know), Music will tell you what tune the other person is currently listening to.

Hints, tips and tricks

You may wish to go into the Preferences and enter something customised into the Real Name and Quit Message fields (you need not use your real name – some other personal phrase would do). You can also opt to have JoyChat connect automatically when you load it.

Connection preferences

You should really also select Open Separate Window for Private Messages in the Advanced tab, although at time of writing, this option does not work.

Note that you may encounter Register Nickname under the File menu; this feature is designed for working with a nickname registration system like NickServ, but presently does not work; don’t try to use it.

uilleann, 19th September 2003