Tell me more ×
Web Applications Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for power users of web applications. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 12 down vote favorite
5

I don't typically communicate via IRC and therefore don't keep a client installed. To keep from having to download a client I'd like to use a web based IRC service. What web based IRC clients exist and what is your favorite?

share|improve this question
You might also be interested in webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/610/… – Robert Munteanu Jul 2 '10 at 15:07

closed as not a real question by phwd♦ Jan 18 '11 at 6:49

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

6 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Mibbit has a clean UI, doesn't require any plugins and has an embed feature.

share|improve this answer
1  
Note that Mibbit doesn't work with Freenode. See blog.freenode.net/2009/06/… and blog.mibbit.com/?p=306 – Stefan Lasiewski Jul 14 '10 at 0:10
Mibbit also is probably unsupported by Quakenet, as they developed their own ads-free embeddable solution, qwebirc, available for Quakenet and Freenode – badp Jul 24 '10 at 16:16
up vote 4 down vote

I have used the 3 preceding solutions, however I found that http://webchat.freenode.net/ seems to have the slickest (read:minimalist) interface and best feature set.

share|improve this answer
+1 for webchat.freenode.net . It's simple and useful. What package do they use? – Stefan Lasiewski Jul 13 '10 at 22:38
It's made on Quakenet. Completely ads free. – badp Jul 24 '10 at 16:11
up vote 3 down vote

I have used CGI::IRC installed on my own server to access IRC. It's not perfect, but it works and is free :)

share|improve this answer
If you need to host your own web IRC client, this is pretty much the only option I know for open source packages. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated since 2006. – spoulson Jul 2 '10 at 13:07
Does it need updating? Does it have some security holes or something? – x3ja Jul 3 '10 at 7:51
up vote 1 down vote

A newer tool I've run into is called Alice, which has a really nice and simple UI. If you don't want to run your own they're working on a hosted version.

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

On IRCNet and EFNet you can use this: http://webchat.xs4all.nl/index.php

http://chat.ircnet.org redirects over there.

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

If you are looking for a solution which you can install to your own webserver, then an alternative to CGI:IRC is qwebirc. A comparison:

  • CGI:IRC is written in Perl; qwebirc is written in Python
  • CGI:IRC requires a webserver (and runs as a CGI); qwebirc contains its own webserver (based on Twisted), running on its dedicated TCP port
  • CGI:IRC uses one process per connection (may consume too much memory); qwebirc runs in a single process, no matter how many connections there are (so it uses much less memory)
  • the latency per message (both incoming and outgoing) is very low for both CGI:IRC and qwebirc
share|improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.