Dear mIRC User,

mIRC version 6.17 has released a few minutes ago. As you might have noticed we took a while off. Khaled completed his masters degree with a thesis about Fair Trade, and I spent quite a lot of time on the house, work, kids etc. And I guess our girlfriends didn't mind the relaxed pace either! Of course we kept a close eye on mIRC's behaviour, the messageboard and helpdesk to make sure we could address any (security) issues that could have risen. A few months ago we picked up the pace again, resulting in this new mIRC version.

How to upgrade?
As you know mIRC is distributed in a self-extracting cabinet (mirc617.exe) that helps you to install mIRC on your PC. Simply download the cabinet and run the installer. Follow the instructions the installer program gives to you. When upgrading all your old settings and scripts will stay as they were, if you want that. Read the questions the installer program asks with care and nothing can go wrong. You will be chatting with the new mIRC in no time. If you get stuck or if you want to find out more about a certain feature, just click on a Help button or browse the Help file and you should find lots of hints to help you out. We also give some information on changed, improved and fixed features and functions below.

Where to download?
For the latest download addresses look on the download page on the mIRC websites. On the mIRC websites also the new mIRC FAQ version 59 (mfaq59hp.zip) is available. The FAQ answers a lot of questions regarding mIRC, IRC, DCC and the like. It also includes a tutorial on Aliases, Popups and on 'programming' the Tools/Remote section.

Registering mIRC
As you know, mIRC can be downloaded freely and evaluated for 30 days. If you find that you enjoy using mIRC, it would be great and much appreciated if you registered your copy. This licenses you to keep your copy of mIRC and helps to support our continued work on mIRC. You can find out how to register here.

Fixes, improvements and new features.
Khaled added support for displaying UTF-8 text as unicode to mIRC. This works in status, channel, query, and other windows, and in nickname listboxes, window titlebars, switchbar, and tooltips. The display of UTF-8 can be enabled by default for all windows in the Options/IRC/Messages dialog, or individually for any window you like via the Fonts dialog. Use the /font command to open the Fonts dialog. Make sure you select a font that contains the characters or script (hebrew, arabic, greek, cyrillic,...) you want to see!

The Fonts dialog also has an "Encode" option that encodes outgoing text in UTF-8 based on the script/codepage selected for that window. The Encode feature is selective, ie. it only encodes the parts of an outgoing message that are not already in UTF-8 format. It also takes into account if the IRC server is fully UTF-8 enabled or not.

Other changes.
  • mIRC now has a 'check for timed out connections' option in connect/options dialog. When this is set mIRC pings the server every so often if it hasn't heard form the server for a while to test your connection.
  • Support for initiating passive dcc send/chat connections has been added.
  • Changing the default font for a window type now affects all open windows of the same type immediately.
  • Most file dialogs are now resizable.
  • You can disable the $decode identifier (and various other "dangerous" commands) in the Lock options dialog. (The $decode is of course disabled by default.)
  • Lots of SSL things have improved and mIRC now also supports SSL connections for sockets.

This new version has extended support for MP3 id3v2 tags, better invite and except lists, and heaps of other little thingies and identifiers like $findfilen/$finddirn, $qt(text)/$noqt(text), $locked and $mouse.key improvements. Of course also some UTF-8 related identifiers like $utfencode(), $utfdecode() and $isutf() have been added.

Please read the help file in mIRC and the whatsnew.txt on the website to learn about the complete list of changes and their impact. Some changes are obvious, some need getting used to - please take your time to play with them and see how they work. May we invite you to use this Message Board for all questions you might have? The board offers great help with everything related to mIRC!

Thanks for using mIRC, have fun on IRC!

Krejt.