Mibbit supports using aliases to replace a command with another string, mostly this is a handy way to abbreviate a command or to add arguments to a frequently used command.  This is great for saving time or remembering commonly used phrases and the settings for these are stored in your Mibbit preferences.

Creating aliases.

Aliases are created by storing a pair of strings in Preferences, a “match” and a corresponding “command”.
For example entering the match /think with the command /me thinks $1 would result in the entry to chat of “/think okay” being replaced with “sally thinks okay“.

Editing aliases is a case of loading your account Preferences and editing entries under the ’Alias’ tab:

In this example the alias  has been extended so that all of the words after /think are used in the replacement (using $1- in the Command).

In chat it would look like this:

Default aliases.

A whole set of useful aliases are stored in your account by default making it easier to use the client.  These are found at: http://wiki.mibbit.com/index.php/Alias along with more information about how to use them.

Aliases can be hugely powerful when used with conventional IRC commands to carry out messaging and operator actions.  In the Main Client these commands can also be executed when a match occurs on joining a channel.  For example, the pair: >mibbit>#french and /translatethem english would mean every time Sally joins the #french channel her translation setting is changed to receive in English.

More information can be found in: http://wiki.mibbit.com/index.php/Alias and http://wiki.mibbit.com/index.php/Alias/Examples

Hello!  \o.      As tweeted earlier the SSL Widget with https:// is back after a short ( < 24hr ) outage due to issues with our load-balancer.  Thanks for sticking with us.

We’ve been working on a significant project to deliver improvements to load times and resilience, parts of the work have relied on other services which haven’t performed as expected and this has led to several periods where users might have had to reconnect to the Widget.

We’ve now reached point where new fixes and better code for fail over is in place and these improvements will serve to improve the Widget experience, these can be summarised as;

• settings (prefs) load direct from our Amazon S3 making the widget faster/better/smoother to load and use
• a new system updates and shares widget settings every minute down from every 15 (no more waiting for cache to complete)
• session resume and autoConnect now work better across browsers
• bugfix for non-set time zone / country on join is in place
• fixed an issue where invalid characters in URL cause loading to freeze or take a long time, this was occurring if an incorrect &settingsID= was used. ( a 5 second timeout is now in place )

Thank you to everyone who has helped highlight issues and show where improvements could be made, appreciate the input.

Widget load-balancing will be changing again so that a single domain identifier is shown to non-iframe users. As this happens we will give more info about the change.

Delivering improvement for the Widget is intended to make a better experience for everyone who uses Mibbit and IRC, going forward we intend to bring similar benefits to the Main Chat client and the way it loads, load-balances and performs.

Thanks for listening!

Mibbit

Apologies for that, it’s now back up and everyone is able to use https:// again.

https:// is currently unavailable for the Widget.  Please revert to using http:// whilst this issue is resolved.  Please accept our apologies, more info as we work on it.

When search is not enough and you want to have your Mibbit client remember the channels you connect to you can setup details in your Account / Channels tabs and Mibbit will even auto-connect for you.

To do this log onto Mibbit and click “Channels”  (signup free if you don’t have an account):

Next, add the entry(s) and save changes, simple as that.  You need to know the network name (irc Server address) and the channel (usually begins with ‘#’).  Separate more than one channel using a comma.

This is all assuming you identify your nickname manually, if you want it Mibbit can automatically identify on your behalf.  To do this use the “Accounts” tab:

“Save changes” to finish. Now you’re all set.  Each time you Log-In Mibbit will auto-identify and automatically connect to your channels.

Most connections to Mibbit are provided with a random nickname on connect, usually beginning “mib_…”.  On the Main Client setting up an account and registered nick resolves this for you, but on the Widget connections are left as ‘mib_’ unless changed.

This however is very easy to change so your Widget provides all new chatters with  nicknames more relevant to your chat.  It’s simple, just use the &nick= parameter.

For example adding &nick=Guest?? to your URI / <iframe> code turns a random nick into something easier on the eye:

Best practice is to escape the ‘?’ question mark by using %3F instead, so it becomes &nick=Guest%3F%3F

Many more URI parameters are in this Wiki doc here, and don’t forget, showing the nick in the Input Bar is easy too.

This post looks at how to replace icons on the UserList with a style that better matches your site.

Standard icons

To start, if you don’t already have a Mibbit chat you can get one running in a few minutes by creating a widget and pasting the code into your web page.  All configuration is done through the Widget Manager including icons which we will look at now.

Mibbit has two sets of icons here: User icons (showing the type of connection) and Mode icons which show the status of each person. It’s important to know which you want to change, find or create a new icon and make sure you have a URL for it (upload it if needed).  Once you’re clear on the new style you want navigate to ‘Prefs’ and ‘Userlist’ in the Widget Manager and edit the user and mode icons entries, replacing the existing entry.

Once you save the new settings you can preview them here too. In this example we have used icons from the Crystal Clear set by Everaldo Coelho plus our very own frog!

If you’re looking for colors and text changes these are easy; use ‘prefs’ to set connect messages, change buttons and set the color of virtually any item on the whole config. Even custom Filters and prompt images can be configured with an upgrade.

An increasing number of people have been connecting to chat on Twitch.tv using Mibbit. This is just one way to talk with the streamers and other viewers, there is the standard chat on Twitch or a conventional client, but if you’re hosting a lot of chatters it can be a help to have Mibbit on hand too.

To connect you’ll need to know the streamname and have your Twitch.tv account details handy.

Skip to the guide at Twitch support to find out more.

Besides the streams there’s also a bunch of channels on several IRC networks related to gaming on Twitch. Check it out http://search.mibbit.com/search/twitch.tv

Recently we looked through our stats for last year and were amazed at the numbers for the Mibbit IRC network, IRC client, Widget and website:  1.4m unique visitors, 10k peak connections, 3.0bn (yes billion!) IRC messages per month on average.

In response to the continued usage we’ve made performance changes to make loading and operation of the Main Client and Widget just a little bit faster.  These include;

• Moved to Amazon s3 for storage of images and javascript (faster download to you)
• Translation feature upgraded to Google Translate API v2
• Caching recently translated words for quicker response
• Improved Websocket support

As the standard for Websocket progressed to a new draft in December 2011 we updated our client to make sure the best performance was squeezed out of your browser.

Visitor browser usage followed general internet trends with Chrome and Firefox becoming about matched with 35-40% Mibbit users each but Internet Explorer lower than the general trend at around 10%. Interestingly the level of IE6 users visiting Mibbit is down to around 0.2% (ie6 must die!), much less than even the US average of 0.9%.  We guess that’s a reflection of the tech-savvy nature of you all!

Thanks for using Mibbit and happy 2012!

Back in June Google announced the retirement of their Translate API.  This didn’t go down too well with developers who made use of translation, but Google responded to the feedback with a version 2 of the API.

Mibbit has just completed work to upgrade to our service to v2 of the API, this means you can continue to make use of the translate commands in IRC chat and send and receive live translations as you go.

We’re interested in hearing your feedback on the new version, there are small changes like a different number of language pairs, but mostly it’s the same.  It’s no longer a free api, we’re looking at the best ways to keep it free for our users and need to hear how it’s performing.  So let us know – good or otherwise – contact@mibbit.com or comment on this page.

It’s worth mentioning Mibbit also supports several character sets and lets you use the Mibbit client or Widget in over 10 different user interface languages. See here for details.

Happy translating