DMDircthe intelligent IRC client

Guide to DMDirc 0.3

Introduction

Welcome to DMDirc 0.3. This is the third major release of DMDirc, and offers many improvements and additions over our previous releases. We still have a long way to go before we're finished, and if you have any ideas for improvements, please join us in #DMDirc on Quakenet.

Getting Started

To run DMDirc, you need to download a release from our website (www.DMDirc.com). As DMDirc is written in Java, you will also need a Java Runtime Environment (JRE), which can be downloaded from http://www.java.com/. As of DMDirc 0.3, you will need a JRE of version 6 or greater. Once you have the release, extract the contents of the zip file to a location of your choosing. For convenience, we provide a batch script and a shell script for Windows and Linux users to use to launch DMDirc. Simply double click on the appropriate file (DMDirc.bat for Windows users, or DMDirc.sh for Linux users), and the client should open.

Connecting to a server

To connect to a server, simply open the File menu and select the 'New Server' option. You will be presented with a dialog that allows you to enter the server's address, port, and password (if required). You can also select the profile you wish to use. Profiles are a new feature in DMDirc. They allow you to specify a nickname and realname to use to connect to the server. So, if you use different nicknames (or entire identities) on different servers, you simply have to select the profile to use, and your nickname and realname will be set appropriately.

You can manage your profiles by clicking on the 'Edit' button in the dialog, or by using the "Profile Manager" item in the File menu.

New Features

This is a brief overview of the new features in DMDirc 0.3.

Preferences dialog

The new preferences dialog allows you to change almost all client settings without editing any files by hand. You can access the preferences dialog via the 'File' menu. The client options are split into seven categories - General, GUI, Treeview, Notifications, Input, Logging and Advanced.

For options that specify colours (such as the fore/background colour settings found in the UI category), you can use one of the sixteen IRC colour codes (0-15) or a hexadecimal string (e.g. ff0000 for red).

Channel settings

In addition to the new preferences dialog, we now also allow you to set options on a per-channel basis. This feature is accessible within the new channel settings dialog (accessed by right clicking on the channel, or using the /channelsettings command).

The channel settings dialog allows you to easily set/unset channel modes, edit the topic, add bans/invites/exceptions (where the irc server supports them), and set channel-specific client options. The "client settings" tab lists any options currently set for the channel, and allows you to add options via a selection box at the bottom.

Better error handling

DMDirc now has built in error handling, with the ability to send error reports to the developers via the DMDirc.com website. The status of the client is indicated by an icon in the bottom right hand corner. During normal operation, this icon will be a "tick" symbol, indicating there are no problems with the client. If an error occurs, the icon will change to either a blue "info" symbol, an orange "warning" triangle, or a red "error" circle. Clicking on any of these symbols will display an error dialog, giving you details about the error that occured. You can also right click on the icon at any time to see a list of previous errors (and see their details).

If the client encounters a fatal error (i.e., an error from which it can't continue normal operations), you will see a fatal error dialog, and DMDirc will close. The fatal error dialog - like the client's other error dialogs - includes a checkbox to allow the client to submit the error report to the developers. If you do encounter any errors with DMDirc, it would be extremely helpful if you would allow the client to submit these reports.

Link support

Support for clicking on links in messages has now been implemented. You can click on channel names to join the respective channel, or on URLs beginning with http://, https:// or www..

Future versions

We have many plans for DMDirc in the future. Version 0.4 will introduce full plugin support - allowing other developers to expand the client's functionality without editing the client itself and 'actions' support - a system that allows users to make the client respond to certain events (possible uses include notifications when your nickname is mentioned, auto-responders for certain text, automatically logging into services, etc).

Beyond 0.4, we have plans to provide SOCKS proxy support, better control over SSL certificates used to connect to secure servers, full internationalisation - allowing the client to be translated into many languages, and many more features.

Contact us

If you have any questions or comments about DMDirc, the developers can be found in #dmdirc on Quakenet (irc.quakenet.org).