Introduction: Hacks #1-4

One of the great features about IRC is its accessibility. You can connect to any IRC network using an IRC client (read: application). For many users, the IRC client is the friendly face of IRC, allowing you to chat with individuals or groups of users. IRC clients are available for virtually all operating systems. In fact, several different IRC clients are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, so you are spoiled for choice if you have time to experiment with all available choices.

This chapter will show you how to use some of the most popular IRC clients to connect to IRC. Later hacks will then show you how to go beyond the basics and enhance the functionality of some of these IRC clients by exploiting existing features and writing your own IRC client scripts.