HydraIRC [Why HydraIRC?]

My main reasons for writing HydraIRC is because I just can't find an IRC client that supports all the things that I want an IRC client to do. I've installed about 30 IRC clients trying to find a good one, and dismissed loads of others due to lack of features, and I just got to the point where I thought: "I can do better". So here we are!

The main things lacking in other IRC clients are on my feature list, so check that out. There are some IRC clients that come close to my list, but have significant problems that make them unusable (to me) and can't be expanded to provide the functionality I require.

Out of the currently available clients I recommend Klient, Bersirc, Trillian and Xircon.

Bersirc is a pretty good client, but when it comes to joining channels that have around 800 users it slows down to a crawl and eats your CPU time. Freeware, not actively developed, written in Delphi.

Klient is nice, has lots of good features and options but takes way to long to load up and eats lots of resources. It used to slow down when connecting to 800+ user channels. (2.0.11 fixes that). It's shareware too. The GUI is very customizable (in looks, not features), but it just lacks the snappiness of HydraIRC. Also written in delphi.

Trillian has great multi-server support and offers basic IRC chatting, but not much more. Terrible at large file-transfers, very basic scripting and it eats CPU time with lots of channel windows open. Trillian Pro is shareware now too. And it's another one of those horrible skinnable apps.

Xircon is brilliant when coupled with the Kano script. Nice, light-weight, fast multi-server. However development was halted and it is now lacking several modern features. Doesn't re-connect reliably and doesn't handle notifications well. Freeware.

mIRC is the client of choice for most IRCers, but probably only because no-one knows there's anything else out there. It does have quite a few scripts available for it though. Over all it's not a bad client, but it's certainly not a nice client to look at, use or configure. Shareware, hardly ever updated.

My aim is to build a new IRC client that supports all of their best features

» 24/Feb/2003 | Hydra

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