Here's something I was thinking about for a while:
Show a users away info on the notify list (like in any instant messaging program). Currently, the only way I know to find a users away info is to query the users info. Why is such a potentially usefull feature of IRC, hidden away so well?
Add support for sending private messages to multiple users. (Could operate exactly like the "invite user to this conversation" instant messenger function.) Clients would track who was in the conversation and use the privmsg command with a list of users to exchange messages with everyone in the conversation.
Could even have an option of showing the users away info in the channel members list to make the info more readily available while in a channel. Instead of changing nicks to mark your status, you could use the away command (like was meant to be used). Should also be much easier to find people and make it far easier to take advantage of a notify list (no need to add all the different names a person uses when they're away) if they aren't changing their nicks all the time.
I get the impression that instant messaging has taken over a lot of what people used to use IRC for by being more user friendly and supporting different features, but from what I can tell, the IRC protocol can already support all the same features an instant messaging client can. Only problem is that there are no IRC clients designed to take advantage of these features.
Looks like only a few small additions to mIRC would allow it take advantage of all this untapped potential.
Maybe we could even eventually replace all these proprietary instant messaging networks with standard IRC networks.
Excuse my ignorance if all of this has already been done somehow and I just can't find how to enable it. :P
