New AJAX IRC Client: Mibbit.com
Posted January 8th, 2008 by unitone
With a clean design and skillful use of AJAX, Mibbit.com presents itself as a viable option for all the IRC users who only have access to a browser. Now you are able to connect to any IRC network even if you are behind a firewall, because the connections are made through the Mibbit.com client's IP. This is good news as not many internet services offer this particular feature for free.
As most of you know, a lot of IRC networks restrict the number of concurrent connections allowed from a single IP to their servers.
Popular networks like Freenode and OFTC already have an i-line (restricted user) for the Mibbit.com client's IP.
Luckily, Mibbit.com plans to add more IP's to their IRC client. This will allow more connections to be made by Mibbit.com to such IRC networks while minimizing the possibility of reaching the quota in question.
In practice, and only at the client's request, some IRC networks may relax the restrictions on the number of concurrent connections allowed for a specific IP, as they already do in the case of IRC shell providers.
The privacy policy is that of a standard web irc client software. Mibbit.com stores a small buffer of the channels you are in for the 'recent chat' feature if another Mibbit.com user is able to join one of those channels.
A unique ident is provided for each user, which allows server and channel operators to ban a specific Mibbit.com user without affecting the rest.
The designer is considering expanding the software functionality to give the users the option to log the channels they are in and make those logs searchable.
Mibbit.com has great design, a user friendly interface and is feature rich. A cool start towards IRC 2.0 in 2008, alongside IRSeeK.com.
I will certainly follow its development with interest.
Here is the IRC log of the conversation I had with Axod, the webmaster and creator of Mibbit.com. He is a very nice guy, drop in #mibbit-guests to send him a line :)
...
17:41 [unitone] axod do you have any policy for logging?
17:42 [axod] on irc.mibbit.com?
17:42 [axod] or other servers...
17:42 [unitone] on the client
17:42 [axod] up to the IRC server policies I think,
17:42 [axod] what sort of policy were you thinking?
17:43 [unitone] like do you log what i type in other networks?
17:43 [axod] ah ok,
17:44 [axod] there is a short term log of channels
17:44 [axod] this is held in memory, and is used to provide the 'recent chat' feature if someone else is able to join that same channel
17:44 [axod] apart from that I don't currently log anything
17:45 [axod] it's possible in the future I might allow some option to let users store their own logs on here,
17:45 [axod] but if I do anything like that I'll make it clear what they're doing etc
17:45 [unitone] sounds like a cool option
17:46 [axod] yeah I'd like that,
17:46 [axod] have all your logs, and searchable on here
17:46 [unitone] i like the fact that it uses the mibbit ip, is this going to stay?
17:47 [axod] the ip to connect to irc servers?
17:47 [unitone] yes
17:47 [axod] yup. although note that it is not anonymous
17:47 [axod] mibbit ident server passes on a unique ID for you
17:47 [axod] so that the irc severs can ban people
17:48 [unitone] you mean the ident
17:48 [unitone] the part before the @ip
17:48 [axod] yup
17:48 [unitone] cool
17:49 [axod] also I have about 8 other IPs I'll probabl start using for connections
17:49 [axod] some irc servers are a bit anal when it comes to allowing multiple connects from same ip
17:50 [unitone] yes, i noticed
17:50 [axod] some have given out ilines, like freenode + oftc
17:50 [axod] but places like efnet are a bit harder
...
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References:
Website: http://www.mibbit.com/
Blog: http://mibbit.blogspot.com/
IRC: irc://irc.mibbit.com/mibbit-guests
You can join the Vedetta.com chat room using Mibbit.com by connecting to server irc.undernet.org and using #webmaster as channel name.
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"Mibbit.com has great design, a user friendly interface and is feature rich. A cool start towards IRC 2.0 in 2008, alongside IRSeeK.com."
IRC is already at version 2 and has been since 1993, See RFC 1459.
Mibbit and other clients honor the existing IRC version. Since they are only clients, they can not be working towards the next version of IRC.
IRC v3 would require a new daemon first and a client that supports the daemon as in any traditional server/client relationship.
I've extrapolated the "IRC 2.0" term from IRC applications developed in the WEB 2.0 trend.
Thus the IRC 2.0 term inherits the problems from the WEB 2.0 term.
Although the term suggests a new version of the IRC, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use IRC.
There is no new version of the IRC protocol.
It hasn't changed since it was invented.
IRC is and will remain the same protocol.
There isn't much you can change in IRC aside from the network topology.
Some people created new services to add to it but none became universal.
There were some efforts to "modernize" parts of the protocol, e.g the mess that is CTCP but afaik it floundered and stopped.
RFC 1459 is the original request for comments released in 1993.
RFC 1459 has become obsoleted by the introduction of RFC 2812 and no ircd and/or client complies to that RFC anyway.
Any upgrades to the RFC itself are doomed to fail unless they get backing from major client authors, networks and so on.
There have been IRC logs since the beginning of IRC, personal or channel logs, and some of those have been made into IRC web logs. Compiling, archiving and making those logs searchable in a AJAX interface like IRSeeK.com is WEB 2.0 applied to IRC.
There have been "real time" IRC web logs and web forms to send text to a IRC channel since the beginning of IRC. Later CGI and Java made possible WEB IRC clients like CGI:IRC and PJIRC. A WEB IRC client in AJAX that has a built in social network like Mibbit.com is WEB 2.0 applied to IRC.
I use IRC 2.0 here to describe all of this in a synthesized way and not just the fact that those examples have a WEB 2.0 "look" (web design).
References:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1459.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2812.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
irc://irc.freenode.net/freenode
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RFC281x does NOT supercede or officially extend RFC1459 in any way shape or form. Plus it only applies to basicly 1 network .. IRCNet, which currently holds less that 10% of the total IRC community. If you read the very link to rfc2812 you provided the status of the memo will tell you that it's not a standard at all, but a memo to the internet community. RFC1459 is still the one and only official IRC protocol. They are no more IAB official standard than the Tao of IRC, which I find quite funny that users and admins alike prefer to quote it as if it was.
I used the term RFC281x because there are more than just 2812 at place, please see RFC's 2810-2813, All 4 are informational memos, not a request for standard.
While I understand your comments about IRC 2.0 and Web 2.0, they are not even related. They are completely seperate and independant of each other so such a connection doesn't exist. By using the term "a cool start towards IRC 2.0 in 2008" you are intentionally misleading readers to a false conclusion since the statement is completely false is several technical and non-technical ways.
I'd also like to point out that other protocols such as CTCP and DCC as you have mentioned are not part of RFC1459 and never have been, they have their own entities and they are not even official IAB standards.
CTCP - http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/rfc/ctcpspec.html
DCC - http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/rfc/dccspec.html