personnally I still don't see the point to have graphical smileys in an IRC client. IRC is text so why add ugly gfx?
all chat programs I have (trillian/certain webchats I hardly ever use) I always disable the smileys because I think they are ugly and you can express so much better by ASCII :-] they always screw up your sentences too :-[ (like: (17:08) make the last 2 chars a 'cool smiley' for instance...)
