mIRCHelp.us

This is the first stable release of the new Unicode version of mIRC.

The project to convert mIRC to Unicode has taken almost two years of development and testing and has required tens of thousands of changes to 150,000+ lines of source code. This has been the most complex and time-consuming update to mIRC since it was created in 1995, when it started out as a non-Unicode, 16-bit, Windows 3.1 application.

Many areas of mIRC have had to be updated or re-written, from file handling to text processing, from display to memory allocation, from server communications to file transfers.

mIRC should now be faster, more stable, and more compatible with the latest versions of Windows, and should be able to better handle the display and input of a variety of languages.

In addition to being converted to Unicode, there are a few other notable changes:

• Improved Windows 7 compatibility
• More reliable INI file handling
• Faster text display/scrolling
• Speech support
• Improved interface design for a number of features
• Automatic text color correction
• Menubar ALT key show/hide feature
• Support for italic text and other font styles
• Optimized SSL routines
• Status window SSL connection icon
• IPv6 support
• Improved portable support
• Persistent channel history
• Digitally signed executables
• Automatic splitting of long channel/private messages
• Full screen display with F11 function key
• UPnP support
• Many bug fixes
• And more

This version of mIRC is primarily a security release. mIRC users are advised to upgrade due to a security issue related to the use of very long nicknames on non-standard servers.

Several other small issues have also been fixed in this release.

Although this is a minor update, it includes important changes and all users are advised to upgrade.

This version of mIRC is a small though important update to the previous version and has been released primarily to resolve an important issue with ‘if’ statements being processed incorrectly in the scripting language.

Several other small issues have also been fixed in this release.

Although this is a minor update, it includes important changes and is a highly recommended download.

This version of mIRC continues to build on recent releases and addresses a number of issues that have been reported by users since the last release. It includes improvements, changes and fixes to a number of features.

In particular, a new editbox “automatic” lines option has been added that dynamically changes the size of the editbox in a window to show the whole of your typed message, up to half the size of the window. This allows you to easily see and review a long, multiple-line message while keeping the size of the editbox small when it is not in use.

Various other changes include:

• Added support for the transfer of files larger than four gigabytes.
• Added /var -g switch to allow you to set global variable values.
• Added $input() identifier combobox support.
• Fixed UTF-8 text-wrapping display bug.
• Fixed switchbar display button-sorting display bug.
• Fixed window positions not being saved correctly for some windows.
• Fixed server connection not remembering SSL status in some situations.

In total there have been almost 50 changes to this version and although most of them are only small fixes and tweaks, we hope that they result in a more useful and stable mIRC for you.

This version of mIRC builds on recent releases by focusing on stability and reliability and addressing the various issues that have been reported by users since the last release. It includes cosmetic changes to the interface, fixes, optimizations, and improvements to the scripting language.

In particular, mIRC can now handle longer nick names, channel names, and messages, as well as longer variable values in the scripting language.

Various other changes include:

• Added support for network-specific window position saving.
• Fixed mouse wheel handling of scrolling with high resolution mice.
• A “Check for Updates” option has been added to the mIRC Help menu to automatically check for new versions of mIRC.
• Optimized INI file handling to only update those parts of a file that have changed. This decreases file writes and speeds up a number of features in mIRC, including USB drive usage.
• Improved display speed of text in all windows.
• Fixed multi-byte text-wrapping display issues.
• Fixed and optimized a number of @window display features, including the way tabstops are handled.
• Improved Unicode support in the $mp3() identifier.

In total there have been over 50 changes to this version and although most of them are only small fixes and tweaks, we hope that they result in a more useful and stable mIRC for you.

mIRC is back with a new face! mIRC now has a shiny new mIRC logo and new interface icons, updated and designed by the good people at TurboMilk. To match the new icons, we also decided to redesign the mIRC website to bring it into the 21st century… we hope you like the new look!

In addition to the visual changes in mIRC and the website, this new version of mIRC also addresses the various issues that were reported for the last release.

For scripters, we hope you like the changes to the script editor. The interface has been improved, it is now cleaner and easier to read, we added Check Bracket/Sort Variables items to Edit menu, line numbers to the margin, and enter/home key indentation support. The editor also no longer flickers when resized.

Various other changes include:

• A “Hide tips when locked” option to the lock dialog,
• An SSL option to automatically accept invalid certificates,
• Tips now shade each alternate message that is added to an existing tip to make it easier to distinguish individual messages,
• When bars are locked the drag bars are now hidden from view,
• Changed behaviour of “Hide minimized desktop windows” option so that query, message, and chat windows remain visible when they are first opened minimized on the desktop.

In total there have been over 50 changes to this version and although most of them are only small fixes and tweaks, we hope that they result in a more useful and stable mIRC for you.

This version of mIRC offers full Vista compatibility with support for limited user accounts, U3 support, support for tips (those small text balloons that pop up near the Windows tray) to notify you of various events such as incoming messages or users in your notify list coming on or leaving IRC, support for positioning the Treebar at top/bottom of the mIRC window, and a feature that allows you to switch between Normal and Compact modes. Compact mode makes mIRC behave like a messenger with the treebar filling the main window, all windows opening on the desktop, and so on.

mIRC 6.3 fixes some buggy that made it stick to using a secure port if the last connection was a secure one. And when connecting to an ip address from a round robin dns pool, the original connect address is now remembered and the connect message now has “dns pool” appended to it. By popular request Khaled changed the logging method back to the simple plain old method, so mIRC no longer uses the name.N.log filename format. Also a reload logs bug where mIRC was loading logs in wrong order is fixed.

Various other changes include:

• Full Vista compatability, among others, means that new installations of mIRC now save all settings in the User’s “Application Data\mIRC” folder by default. However, if the installer or mIRC find an old installation with a mirc.ini in the same folder as mirc.exe they will use the mirc.exe folder for all settings. If you are installing a new mIRC over an old version you should see no change in behaviour. The installer is now also aware of administrator and standard user accounts and installs mIRC accordingly. Under an Administrator account, the installer will create icons for “All Users”. Under a Standard account, it will create icons only for the current user. When run under Vista mIRC now checks for a corresponding virtual store folder at startup. Vista creates virtual store folders for older non-Vista compatible applications, such as older versions of mIRC. If mIRC finds such a folder, it displays a dialog box allowing you to retrieve your old mIRC files and settings.
• With the U3 support in mIRC we should be able to make an U3 package available for mIRC with which you can take your mIRC wherever you want! U3 is a specification for applications to run from portable storage devices (ie. flash drives) without leaving any settings/traces on the host system. Look on U3.com for more info.
• The support for traytips can be used to notify you of various events such as incoming messages or users in your notify list coming on or leaving IRC. The tips only appear when mIRC is not the active application and are hidden the moment mIRC becomes active. Tips can be fully configured and scripted to show exactly what you want, even in combination with mIRC’s highlight function. and of course you can completely disable the tips

As always this new version of mIRC addresses many, if not all, of the issues reported since the last release. A lot of time was spent tweaking new features, fixing bugs, and a handful of other things. In total there are over 100 changes in this version, making this a great new mIRC! We encourage you to explore the versions.txt file for all changes. Some changes are obvious, some need getting used to – please take your time to play with them and see how they work.

As always this new version of mIRC addresses many of the issues reported since the last release. A lot of time was spent tweaking features and fixing bugs. We worked on the installer, logfile handling, script error handling, as well as a handful of other things. Only a few new features and functions have been added, making this mainly a bugfix release.

The mIRC installer has improved a lot! The installer now offers several pre-defined modes that allow you to choose between an Upgrade, Full or Custom install. It ensures that backups of old files are successful, reports error and aborts the installation if it failed for some reason.

The IRC Servers dialog now uses a treeview to display the servers list. In response to this change the format of the servers.ini file has changed to accomodate for a larger amount of servers. The DNS routines have changed so that on connect the retrieved pool of IP addresses is randomised to spread the load across connections.

Preparing for a fully Vista (the new Windows) compliant version of mIRC several changes have been made. These include minor cosmetic issues, icons, a new help file in .chm format, etc. Also a command line option has been created that makes mIRC avoid all use of the registry. If this switch is used, mIRC stores registry information in the mirc.ini file in a [user] section, and does not modify registry to support irc:// links etc. This comes handy when you want to run mIRC from a memory stick or similar device.

A lot of changes have been made to the way mIRC names and stores logfiles. This is mainly done to prevent file corruption and loss of data when you open multiple server connections. mIRC tries to name and rename logfiles as smart as possible. Also, when settings are changed in the logging dialog, the logging state of windows and any open log filenames are now immediately updated to reflect the new settings. In previous versions new settings were only applied when a new window was created.

We hope to have smashed the confusing ‘flash’ and ‘beep’ options by adding a “Default” menu item to System Menu Flash/Beep items, allowing channel/query/chat windows to use the default settings as set in the Options/Sounds dialog. And disabling sounds in the Sounds dialog now does actually disable -all- sounds, even those using /splay or /beep.

For experienced users and scripting enthusiasts this new version has heaps of fixes, changes and other little thingies to play with. Some of the more useful changes for scripters are: an extension to the /toolbar command that allows you to customize your toolbar, it now has a new switch that makes mIRC remember your current toolbar settings and reload them automatically the next time you run mIRC; the /window -h behaviour has been fixed so that you can hide Status windows from the switchbar; the on WAVEEND event now triggers as it should; Regular expression support has been improved and resolves gpf and speed issues in the previous version; script $error handling should work better now; and /drawrot is now much faster. We encourage you to explore the versions.txt file for all changes. Some changes are obvious, some need getting used to – please take your time to play with them and see how they work.

In total there have been over 80 changes in this version and although most of them are bug fixes or small tweaks, we hope that they result in a more useful and stable mIRC for you.