The file mirc55s.exe contains the 16 bit mIRC version 5.5 Released January 8th, 1999. mirc55s.exe : sixteen bit distribution file for Windows 3.1x mirc55t.exe : thirtytwo bit distribution file for Windows95, Windows98 and NT. Welcome to mIRC version 5.5 mIRC is a shareware Internet Relay Chat client for Windows. It is developped and copyrighted by Khaled Mardam-Bey. mIRC is a highly configurable IRC client with all the goodies other clients on UNIX, Macintosh and even on Windows offer, combined with a *nice* and clean users interface. mIRC offers full color control, full DCC File Send and Get capabilities, aliases, a remote commands and events handler, scripting, place sensitive probrammable popup menu's, World Wide Web and sound support, and... a lot more. mIRC can act as an external Web browser helper application but it can work totally independent as well. mIRC is shareware but not crippled in any way... If you like it you're asked to register your copy to support work on future versions, new features, and bug fixes, and to ensure technical support via email now and in the future. mIRC is distributed in self-extracting cabinets that automatically will install mIRC on your PC. You dont need any external programs to install and setup mIRC on your PC, just follow the instructions. You first have to find out what mIRC issue you will be running. mIRC is available in a 16 bit issue (mirc55s.exe) and a 32 bit issue (mirc55t.exe). The 32 bit issue is meant for 32 bit Operating Systems like Windows95, Windows98 and Windows NT. If you are not sure what issue to use, try the 16 bit mIRC issue! That issue will always work. Download the cabinet of your choice and run the installer. Once you have installed mIRC, you can run it, fill in the required setup information, and connect to an IRC server. When you're upgrading mIRC all your old settings and scripts will stay as they were. mIRC will guide you through the initial stages and hopefully you'll be chatting in no time. If you get stuck or want to find out more about a certain feature, just click on a Help button in a window or browse the Help file and you should find lots of hints to help you out. As you become more experienced you can also start configuring mIRC's features to suit your own needs and tastes, features such as colours, fonts, function keys, aliases, popup menus, scripts, sounds and many others. Good luck and have fun! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet Relay Chat. For those of you new to the Internet, IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. The IRC networks offer a virtual meeting place where people from all over the world can meet and talk. Dont mix-up IRC with the slow Web chats you might have seen. IRC is specially designed for chatting and works very fast. IRC was originally written by Jarkko Oikarinen in 1988. Since starting in Finland, it has spread to almost all countries around the world. IRC is a multi-user chat system, where people meet on "channels" (rooms, virtual places, usually with a certain topic of conversation) to talk in groups, or privately. There is no restriction to the number of people that can participate in a given discussion, or the number of channels that can be formed on IRC. mIRC attempts to provide a user-friendly interface for use with the IRC networks. As a user you run mIRC on your PC and you connect to a "server" in an IRC network. All servers are interconnected and pass messages from user to user over the IRC network. One server can be connected to several other servers and up to hundreds of clients. You can join several channels at once and participate in private discussions at the same time. The various parts of the IRC client mIRC have been designed with the aim of simplifying and speeding up your IRC sessions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- What is new? mIRC's new version has far to many new features and functions to mention here in detail. I'll try to show the best here, in a nutshell. Dont forget to read the versions.txt when you want to get fully informed of all changes. You'll notice lots of changes in the dialogs with options. mIRC now uses a treelist with options with the less important options more down in its branches. The old tabbed dialogs became too stuffed and confused new users too much. On first startup there is now only one small fill-in screen that matters for your first IRC experience. You can now click on virtually everything to open URL's, join channels or popup menu's associated to users on your channel. * Revamped the Options dialog. It now uses a treelist which provides more space to add new features clearly and cleanly. * You can now double-click directly on URLs in windows to open a web browser. If you're in a channel window and you move the mouse over text that is a nickname on that channel, you can double-click on it for the usual doubleclick behaviour, or right-click on it to open the nickname list popup menu. If you single-click on the nickname, the cursor in the listbox is scrolled to that nickname. You can also double-click on a channel name to join it. * mIRC has new interface options that allows you to position the list of nicknames to the right or left, or to turn it off entirely. * You can now sort channels in the /list window to sort them by channel name, number of users, or channel topics. * A Control-F (find) function now allows you to search for any text in your status and channel windows. * Several new popup menu's 'under' the toolbar buttons now give fast access to your most used IRC servers, and networks and offer smart functions for the channels folder, finger, chat, and notify toolbar buttons. * You can now automagically trim log files. This keeps log files below the maximum size you specify. This might save a lot of disk space! A somewhat hidden item in the versions.txt states "Moved all text to resources area". This will have quite some impact in the future since this is the first step to international mIRC versions! Several other small but handy thingies will improve your time on IRC a lot; * Your own messages and notices are now time-stamped if you have time-stamping turned on in a window. * If you have a /query window open with someone, private messages from them won't be ignored even if their address matches an ignore address. * New options in the Windows dialog make the Editor dialog modeless ie. it opens as a Desktop window, allowing editing of scripts while chatting etc. Did we forget about the scripters? NO, dont worry :-) By popular request we added lots and lots of new commands, functions and parameters! Most of your requests have been implemented and a lot more are newly invented by our beta testers. Have fun scanning through the versions.txt and explore some new frontiers. Dont forget to read the helpfile though, thats the best way to get fully informed about all new features and to see new examples and nifty ideas! * Improved /timers allow more precisely measurement of the elapsed time. Also added is a /timer -c switch, makes mIRC "catch up" a timer by executing it more than once during one interval if the real-time interval isn't matching your requested interval. This happens often because timer messages can be delayed by a few milli-seconds each time they are triggered due to the OS being busy, and the number of milliseconds lost accumulates over time. * Also added is support for DALnet's WATCH list. mIRC now uses this for it's notify feature when on DALnet servers >= 4.6.3 since it's far more efficient. All mIRC does is submit a list of nicknames to the server, and the server then notifies mIRC whenever a user comes on or off the network. On non-DALnet servers, mIRC still uses the old notify method which sends an ISON with your entire notify list every 40 seconds or so to get an update. This method ignores the address portion of your notify nickname if you specified one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- More information. mIRC is supported by a set of WWW pages. On these pages you'll find information on new versions, new ideas, known bugs and solutions, and possibly all other information you might need on IRC in general, and on mIRC. Besides the newest mIRC also the new mIRC FAQ and IRC Intro file are available from these www pages. http://www.mirc.com/ USA http://www.mirc.co.uk United Kingdom http://www.geocities.com/~mirc/ USA http://www.nip.nl/mirc/ The Netherlands http://www.mirc.queen.it/ Italy http://mirc.kems.net/ Kuwait http://www.mirc.com.ar/ Argentina http://www.conesul.com.br/mirc/ Brazil http://www.mirc.co.za/ South Africa http://mirc.eon.net.au/ Australia ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- License Agreement mIRC® v5.5 Internet Relay Chat Client Copyright © 1995-1999 mIRC Co. Ltd. All rights reserved. mIRC is Shareware which means that you can use it legally for 30 days free of charge to evaluate it. If during, or at the end of, that period you decide that you would like to continue using it, please register your copy. Your single-user registration will license you to use your copy of mIRC, will support work on future versions, new features, and bug fixes, and will provide you with technical support via email. Please see the Registration section in the help file to find out how you can register. mIRC may be freely distributed subject to, but not limited to, the following terms: mIRC may not be sold or resold, distributed as a part of any commercial package, used in a commercial environment, used or distributed in support of a commercial service, or used or distributed to support any kind of profit- generating activity, even if it is being distributed freely. If you would like to distribute mIRC as part of a shareware distribution, magazine, internet book, CD ROM, etc. contact me for written permission. All commercial use interests in mIRC eg. site licensing, should be directed to khaled@mardam.demon.co.uk. mIRC may only be distributed in the original distribution install file format as distributed by mIRC Co. Ltd. The mIRC distribution install file may not have files added to it or removed from it, and none of its contents may be modified, decompiled, or reverse engineered. mIRC is provided AS IS without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall mIRC Co. Ltd. be liable for any damages whatsoever including direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, loss of business profits or special damages, even if mIRC Co. Ltd. has been advised of the possibility of such damages. mIRC is a registered trademark of mIRC Co. Ltd. The mIRC Logo is a trademark of mIRC Co. Ltd. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------