An IRC client for MacOS™

What is ircle? Ircle is a Macintosh program to use IRC (Internet Relay Chat). IRC enables you to talk with typed messages, in realtime, to other Internet users around the world. IRC is organized in channels on a specific topic. You can also talk privately with someone. On average there are about 20,000 users and 5,000 channels online on the big IRC networks. People say they are sending me messages, but I don't see them. Whats wrong? Those messages are probably send to your console window. Go to Preferences and click on the Misce-tab. You will find an option there which says 'Prv msg to Console'. If you disable that, your messages will be send to the active window. Make sure you save your preferences after making a change. Otherwise, you will have to make the changes again next time you startup Ircle. I keep getting disconnected when I try to get a list of channels. How do I get a list of channels without this happening? The reason why you are having this problem of getting disconnected is because you are more than likely on a network that carries a lot of channels. When you ask the server to give you a list of channels, the server overloads you with all the information and you flood yourself off. On the Undernet you can solve this problem by doing the following: Make sure you have your channel list window open (command L). Then type /list ># (where # = some number greater than 10 or so). This will get you a list of channels with more than 10 people on them. If you are getting disconnected when you try to Refresh the list, please be sure to put a number greater than 10 in the minimum # of users box. In other cases you will have to find a server that does support the /list command fully. Some networks actually list their channels out on a web page. Check your favorite network's web site to see if it has such a listing. Looking for a unique way to find channels? Do the following: type /who *.com or /who *.net (or try a less popular hostname ending). This will give you a list of nicks with that particular suffix and the channels that they are on. Many interesting channels may be found that way. I use /mode +i for invisible, but people still see me on the channel. Why? The mode of being invisible applies to not being listed when someone does a /who *.hostmask or /who . You are not invisible to other people who are on the channel with you, but rather, you are invisible to the outside world. This doesn't, however, protect you from being discovered by someone doing /whois . If you truly don't want to be bothered by someone, change your nick completely and stay away from the channel that they are on. How can I protect myself from being flooded by someone? Change your nick or shut off ctcp and dcc completely. Stay away from lamers. Have flood protection turned on in Ircle. To turn flood protection on, go to the Preferences and click on the ctcp-tab. There you will find the option 'CTCP flood protection'. How do I hear sounds that other people play? First of all, in order to hear a sound on your Mac, you must have it on your harddrive already. Be sure that the sound is in your sound folder that you use for IRCing. Have your ctcp preferences on. If you don't have the sound that someone played, ask them to send you the sound file. If they're running a sound script for an automatic dcc, follow the commands that they give you (example !nick soundfilename). If they aren't, a simple "I don't have that particular sound in my collection. Would you mind sending it to me?" usually works. To send a sound to someone, the command is /sound nick soundname. To send a sound to a channel, the command is /sound #channelname soundname. To send a .wav or a .mid file, the command is the same, just use the name of the sound: /sound nick soundname.wav or /sound nick soundname.mid. Be sure you have Quicktime 2.5 installed on your Mac. Ircle will always try to play the sound with QuickTime. Hence, not all kinds of .wav-files will be recognized by QuickTime. Therefore, make sure you install an additional wav-player like Soundapp. After you installed Soundapp go to the Preferences and click on the ctcp-tab. Show Ircle where it can find the wav-player. After that Ircle will automatically play all the sounds. Make sure you save your preferences! How do I do video streaming? You need Quicktime 2.x (2.5 is recommended) a Connectix QuickCam (and its related software) or an AV card and a video recorder. Be sure that you do not have another application running that is competing for the video channel. Type /video. You should see a video window displayed on your screen. Click on the Video button to set up your video preferences. Set your compressor (usually video), frames per second (30 is good) and key frame (30). Then you can either tell everyone to get your video stream (/ctcp video stream) or you can send it out to people (/dcc sendvideostream ). Kewl stuff you didn't know about video: You can make movies from the video streams that people send to you (you can't send a stream to yourself, but you can save what you feed out...). When you get a video stream from someone, SHIFT CLICK the mouse on top of the picture window, you'll get a dialog box that asks where you want to save the movie to. After you have closed the stream you will have a Quicktime movie on your hard disk that you can open with MoviePlayer Or, you can save individual frames. Click your mouse on top of the image in the window and drag it to the desktop. How do I create a face? Faces are little pictures representations of what we think we look like. Some of us use real pictures; some of us do not. If you want a face for the face file, use a pict, jpeg or gif of what you want your face to be. Yes, you can use an icon, but you need to change it to a pict, gif or jpeg. Do not use a big file. Face pictures should only be 32x32 pixels. Once you have a picture of what you want your face to be, get on-line in a channel and have your face window open. Click on the square above your nick then click the Set Face button. Select the file that you want to use. If you open your face window and the window says 'No facefile selected', then go to Preferences and click on the 'Faces-tab'. Show Ircle where it can find your facesfile. Don't forget to save your preferences. How do I edit the notify list? Open your connections window (command K). EDIT your nick (select your nick in the list and press the EDIT button). Click on the AUTOEXEC tab. Delete the entry that says /notify Newbie. Place /notify and your list of nicks without any commas between the names. Click OK. Then, go to FILE in the menu bar at the top of your screen. Scroll down to Save Preferences. SAVE your preferences. Changes will take effect on next startup. Sometimes when I try to connect to a server, I get a message that I have no authorization. Why is that? This happens if your mask contains an ip number that can't be resolved into a hostname. (like ircle@145.58.32.246). Not all servers accept that and will reject you. If this happens, you have to notify your internet service provider about this. It is good practice for an ISP to have all the ip numbers they use entered in their name server, so that they resolve into a hostname. In the meantime, try to connect to another server. You can find the serverlist in your Connections window. Ircle is shareware. What does that mean exactly? Shareware means that you are allowed to freely copy (without charging for it) Ircle and 'test drive' it for 30 days. If you like the program and want to keep on using it legally, you can register by paying the shareware price (US$15 or equivalent). By registering you will receive a personal serial number to get rid of the startup dialog. Ircle has no features disabled when not registered. For more info on register Ircle, click here. How can I run the scripts? Go to preferences and click on the 'scripts-tab'. Show Ircle where it can find your script-folder. If you have done that, just type /colorgreet < #channelname>. For more information on Scripting, check the Scripting Readme-file. Also check out 'How to script Ircle' in your help window. If I join a channel, I can't use the channelmode-switches. Why? Channelmode-switches are only available to you, if you are a channel-operator. As a channel-operator you can set the modes for a channel. If I use the 'Tile-Channels-command' it only tiles the channel windows. How can I tile the channel windows including the console window? Hit the option-key and then pull down the window-menu. The 'Tile Channels+Console' option will then become visible to you. You can also use the shortcut 'option-cmd T'. Sometimes I get the message ***Could not get video stream cantDoThatInCurrentMode***. What does that mean? Someone is sending you a video stream. You are not able to see it, probably because QuickTime isn't installed. Check if you have QuikTime installed. If it is installed, go to your Control Panel menu and choose Extensions manager. Check if QuickTime is disabled. After installing QuickTime or enabling QuickTime in the Extensions Manager, you have to restart your Mac. How does DCC resume work? In order to use dcc resume, go to 'Preferences' (File Menu) and click on the 'DCC'-tab. Turn 'AutoSave' and 'AutoGet' on. If someone sends you a file which is already in your DCC-get folder, Ircle will ask you to resume the file or not. How can I stop a sound played by QuickTime? Sounds played by QuikTime can not be cancelled. If you want to have the option to cancel sounds played on your computer, use an additional soundplayer (e.g. SoundApp) and go to Preferences and click on the 'CTCP'-tab. You can switch off QuickTime for sounds there.