Control Codes

mIRC interprets control codes in text for Bold, Underline, Reverse, and Color and displays text in the specified format.



You can use the following key combinations to insert control codes in text:



Control+B for bold text

Control+U for underlined text

Control+R for reverse text

Control+K for colored text

Control+O for plain text



Examples



To underline a word:



1.Type Control+U

2.Type in the word

3.Type Control+U again



Only the text that is enclosed by the start and end codes will be affected. You can use this method with all of the other control codes.



To color a word you can use Control+K which allows you to specify a color number:



1.Type Control+K

2.Type a number between 0 and 15

3.Type the word

4.Type Control+K again



If you want to change the background color of a word, you would need to type two numbers separated by a comma instead of just one number. The first number is the text color, the second number is the background color. The colors range from 0 to 15, and the indexes are:



0 white 8 yellow

1 black 9 lightgreen

2 blue 10 cyan

3 green 11 lightcyan

4 lightred 12 lightblue

5 brown 13 pink

6 purple 14 grey

7 orange 15 lightgrey



Control+K can pop up a color index dialog, depending on your setting in the Keys dialog.



If you want to enclose existing text in control codes, just select the text with your cursor, and then type the Control code. This will insert both starting and ending control codes around the text you selected.



You can enclose text in multiple control codes, so for example you could have a bold, underlined, and colored word.



You can use color 99 to indicate a transparent color.



Note: If you have the Pop up color index switch turned on in the Options dialog, mIRC will pop up a small color index showing you each color and it's associated number so you don't have to memorize them.



If you want to strip out control codes from incoming private or channel messages, you can either change the strip settings in the Messages dialog, or you can use the /strip command.
From MIRC HELP By Khaled Mardam Bey

Accepting Files on IRC and the Internet in General

Sharing files on IRC is part of what makes IRC fun, however it's important to be careful about who you accept files from and which types of files you accept.

Although most files are safe, there are always a few that may be infected with a virus, or may be malicious programs that try to damage your computer. Since it's impossible to know in advance whether a file that is being sent to you might cause a problem, following a few common sense rules can help:

Only accept files from people that you know and trust. You should never accept files from people you don't know, and never accept files without knowing what their purpose is, even from someone you know.

Files ending in .BAT, .COM, .EXE, .DLL have the most potential to cause problems. You should not accept such files from people you don't know, or download them from web/ftp sites which don't appear trustworthy.

Aliases, Popups, or Scripts that can be loaded or typed into your IRC client can also cause problems. mIRC, and most other IRC clients, allow you to create scripts that perform useful functions, but these can also cause problems if misused. You should make sure that you know and trust the source of these files before using them.

Certain types of Document files can contain macros which are run by your Word Processor when you open the document to view it, so these are also potentially harmful. You should make sure that you have macro-warnings turned on in your Word Processor. It is also safer to view any documents that you receive in a plain-text editor first if possible.

If you have an anti-virus program, you should use it to scan all files that you download before you use them. However, IRC is a highly interactive medium where information spreads very quickly, so using an anti-virus program does not guarantee that a file will be safe since it takes time for anti-virus programs to be updated.

From mIRC®V6.31 Copyright 1995-2007 by Khaled Mardam-Bey

List Channels

The List Channels dialog allows you to retrieve the list of currently active channels. You can view the List Channels dialog by clicking on the List Channels button in the toolbar. This dialog can be viewed either by clicking it's button in the toolbar or by typing key combination Alt+L.

Get List

This retrieves a list of all of the active channels from the IRC server. This list can be quite long and depending on your connection it might take several minutes to download. The IRC Server actually sends the whole list, regardless of the filters you specify. You will not be able to do anything on IRC until this retrieval has been completed.

mIRC allows you to specify different filenames for the channels list which can be useful if you regularly connect to different IRC networks.

Apply

This allows you to re-specify the list parameters without having to retrieve the whole list again from the IRC server. Just change the parameters and then click on apply to have them re-listed according to your new criteria.

Match text

You can enter several words (separated by spaces) which mIRC will look for in channel names. Only those channels which match any of the words you specify will be listed. If you leave this empty then all channels will be listed.

Match text in topics

If this is turned on then mIRC will apply the Match Text procedure to channel topics as well. So only channel topics that match any of the words in the Match text editbox will be listed.

Number of people on a channel

This allows you to limit the channels list to those channels which contain a number of people ranging between the specified minimum and maximum.

Lock/Unlock

This allows you lock the Hide parameters with a password thus preventing anyone from changing the Hide settings. The same password must be used to unlock this.

Hide channels which match...

You can enter several words (separated by spaces) which mIRC will look for in both channel names and topics. Any channels which match any of these words will be excluded from the channels list.

Hide non-alphanumeric channels

This will filter out any channels that begin with characters that aren't numbers or letters.

Hint: You can click your right mouse button in the Channels List window to pop up a menu with useful options.

From mIRC®V6.31 Copyright 1995-2007 by Khaled Mardam-Bey

Chat Privately

As well as being able to chat on public channels, mIRC also allows you to chat privately with other people.

If you are on a channel, and you see someone you would like to chat with, you can double-click on their nickname in the nickname listbox and a private query window will open up. You can then start chatting privately to them through the query window. Alternatively, you can click your right mouse button on a nickname in the nickname listbox and a popup menu will appear with various options, one of which will be to open a private query window to the selected nickname.

If you are not on a channel, you can type the command /query nickname, where nickname is the person you want to chat with. Press the enter key, and a query window will open up and you can start chatting privately, assuming of course that the person is on IRC. You can find out if a person is on IRC by using the /whois nickname command.

There is another way to chat privately called DCC Chat. This method is more secure and usually faster because it doesn't rely on the IRC Server to relay your messages. Instead it connects directly to the other person's IRC Client. However it does need to use the IRC Server to initiate the chat session.

To DCC Chat someone, you can click on the Chat button in the toolbar, and a DCC Chat dialog will pop up. Enter the person's nickname, and click on the Chat button, and if the person accepts your DCC Chat request, you will be able to start talking to them privately.

If a user sends you a chat request, a chat dialog will pop up asking you whether you want to accept their chat request. You can then accept or decline. You can find out more about DCC Chat related settings in the DCC section.

The /dcc chat command is another way of initiating a dcc chat, where nickname is the user you with whom want to dcc chat.

Note: DCC Chat needs to use your IP address to initiate a connection with another client. If you are having trouble initiating a connection then your IP address might be wrong. See the Local Info section for more information.

From mIRC®V6.31 Copyright 1995-2007 by Khaled Mardam-Bey

Connection Issues

The most common connection issues that occur when connecting to an IRC server are described below.
Unable to resolve server

If you try to connect to a server and see this message, the problem could be:



Your internet provider's DNS isn't working

This happens occasionally and is a temporary problem with your Internet Provider. This problem would also result in your being unable to connect to other internet services such as web sites. You should try again later.



An invalid or non-working server address

You might be trying to connect to an IRC Server that is currently not working, or perhaps is an old address and doesn't exist anymore. You should try another IRC Server.



Unable to connect to server

If you try to connect to a server and see this message, the problem could be:



IRC server isn't working

You might be trying to connect to an IRC Server that is currently not working. This is the most likely problem. You should try another IRC Server.



Invalid port number

The IRC Server address might be correct but you've specified the wrong port. Most servers operate at least on port 6667, you should try that port to see if it solves the problem.



Unable to resolve local host

If you try to connect to a server and you get Unable to resolve local host then see the Local Info section.



Other messages

If you try to connect to a server and get Disconnected and see the message Closing Link followed by a comment such as No Authorization, or No More Connections, etc., it might be that you're too far away geographically from that server, or that the server is full and can't handle anymore users, or there may be other reasons. You should try a different, closer IRC Server until one works for you.

From mIRC®V6.31 Copyright 1995-2007 by Khaled Mardam-Bey