Dear mIRC User,

mIRC version 6.3 has been released today.

This version of mIRC offers full Vista compatability with support for limited user accounts, U3 support, support for tips (those small text balloons that pop up near the Windows tray) to notify you of various events such as incoming messages or users in your notify list coming on or leaving IRC, support for positioning the Treebar at top/bottom of the mIRC window, and a feature that allows you to switch between Normal and Compact modes. Compact mode makes mIRC behave like a messenger with the treebar filling the main window, all windows opening on the desktop, and so on...

How to upgrade?
As you know mIRC is distributed in a self-extracting cabinet (mirc63.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 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.
Apart from the issues mentioned above mIRC 6.3 fixes some buggy that made it stick to using a secure port if the last connection was a secure one. And when connecting to an ip address from a round robin dns pool, the original connect address is now remembered and the connect message now has "dns pool" appended to it. By popular request Khaled changed the logging method back to the simple plain old method, so mIRC no longer uses the name.N.log filename format. Also a reload logs bug where mIRC was loading logs in wrong order is fixed.

- Full Vista compatability, among others, means that new installations of mIRC now save all settings in the User's "Application Data\mIRC" folder by default. However, if the installer or mIRC find an old installation with a mirc.ini in the same folder as mirc.exe they will use the mirc.exe folder for all settings. If you are installing a new mIRC over an old version you should see no change in behaviour. The installer is now also aware of administrator and standard user accounts and installs mIRC accordingly. Under an Administrator account, the installer will create icons for "All Users". Under a Standard account, it will create icons only for the current user.
When run under Vista mIRC now checks for a corresponding virtual store folder at startup. Vista creates virtual store folders for older non-Vista compatible applications, such as older versions of mIRC. If mIRC finds such a folder, it displays a dialog box allowing you to retrieve your old mIRC files and settings.

- With the U3 support in mIRC we should be able to make an U3 package available for mIRC with which you can take your mIRC wherever you want! U3 is a specification for applications to run from portable storage devices (ie. flash drives) without leaving any settings/traces on the host system. Look on U3.com for more info.

- The support for traytips can be used to notify you of various events such as incoming messages or users in your notify list coming on or leaving IRC. The tips only appear when mIRC is not the active application and are hidden the moment mIRC becomes active. Tips can be fully configured and scripted to show exactly what you want, even in combination with mIRC's highlight function. and of course you can completely disable the tips ;-)

As always this new version of mIRC addresses many, if not all, of the issues reported since the last release. A lot of time was spent tweaking new features, fixing bugs, and a handful of other things. In total there are over 100 changes in this version, making this a great new mIRC!

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!