Mibbit is a web-based

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuabl ...

for web browsers that supports

Internet Relay Chat Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat an ...

(IRC),

Yahoo! Messenger Yahoo! Messenger (sometimes abbreviated Y!M) was an advertisement-supported instant messaging client (computing), client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used wit ...

, and

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. It is developed by Jimmy Moore and is designed around the

Ajax Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Gree ...

model with a

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

written in

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

. It is the IRC application setup by default on

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

Design

Mibbit's

operates entirely within a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

and does not require installation of any software on the user's computer. Most modern web browsers that support recent versions of JavaScript are supported, including

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current an ...

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, ...

, and

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an impor ...

. Mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a musi ...

, and

Nokia N800 The Nokia N800 Internet tablet is a wireless Internet appliance from Nokia, originally announced at the Las Vegas CES 2007 Summit in January 2007. N800 allows the user to browse the Internet and communicate using Wi-Fi networks or with mobi ...

, and other platforms such as the Nintendo

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, ...

are also supported. Unlike typical web-based

IRC client Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called ''channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat an ...

s, Mibbit makes use of a client–server design model. The user interface is written in

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

and

using

programming techniques. The client's backend is written completely in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

and operates independently of the

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initia ...

in a standalone fashion on the Mibbit server. This design differs from web browser

component Circuit Component may refer to: •Are devices that perform functions when they are connected in a circuit. In engineering, science, and technology Generic systems * System components, an entity with discrete structure, such as an assem ...

clients such as ChatZilla or

Java applet Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...

based IRC clients such as PJIRC that operate entirely from within the web browser. It also differs from server-based web proxy IRC clients such as CGI:IRC where all

processing Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming ...

takes place on a remote

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...

. Because the client–server design allows for a centralized Mibbit client server, Mibbit is able to offer extended functionality which is not present in the standard IRC protocol. Some of these extensions include a channel chat buffer that can be shown to Mibbit clients when they join a channel where another Mibbit user is already present, a notification for other Mibbit users that you are typing a message to them, and distinctive icons that allow identification of the device used with Mibbit such as an iPhone, iPod Touch, Wii, etc. Mibbit supports the webirc (cgiirc) protocol which allows the client to send the user's

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

and

hostname In computer networking, a hostname (archaically nodename) is a label that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network and that is used to identify the device in various forms of electronic communication, such as the World Wide Web. Hos ...

to the IRC server. Servers that support webirc allow Mibbit users to appear as regular IRC clients instead of appearing to connect from the mibbit.com domain. If webirc is not used or is unavailable, Mibbit puts the user's hostname in the client's realname field and encodes the user's IP address in

hexadecimal In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, he ...

and sends it as the ident reply.

Features

The Mibbit client has the ability to connect to multiple IRC servers, including servers that use SSL/TLS, can join multiple channels, and can be configured auto-join often used channels. Mibbit uses the

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''. UTF-8 is capable of e ...

character set by default but can also be configured to use other

character set Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values tha ...

s. It supports nickname tab auto-completion, an input history for each tab accessible with the up/down arrow keys,

aliases A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individu ...

, user menu commands, and saving of user preferences. Mibbit can parse

smilies A smiley, sometimes referred to as a smiley face, is a basic ideogram that represents a smiling face. Since the 1950s it has become part of popular culture worldwide, used either as a standalone ideogram, or as a form of communication, such a ...

, links, channels, nicks, and

mIRC mIRC is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for Windows, created in 1995. It is a fully functional chat utility and its integrated scripting language makes it extensible and versatile. mIRC has been described as "one of the most popular IRC cl ...

color codes, and can automatically create

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and imag ...

s for image links and URLs. In addition, Mibbit offers an integrated

pastebin A pastebin or text storage site is a type of online content-hosting service where users can store plain text (e.g. source code snippets for code review via Internet Relay Chat (IRC)). The first pastebin was the eponymous pastebin.com. Other s ...

, an upload service, and can minify URLs. Mibbit also offers typing notification for other Mibbit users, a recent chat buffer for IRC channels when other Mibbit users are already on the channel, and extended whois information with user profiles. Mibbit supports the Google API which allows the client to support a number of

Google Services The following is a list of products, services, and apps provided by Google. Active, soon-to-be discontinued, and discontinued products, services, tools, hardware, and other applications are broken out into designated sections. Web-based product ...

. Mibbit can translate text and conversations on the fly using

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API ...

, Mibbit can also display geographic locations using

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

and supports viewing of

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

videos. In addition to the standard client, Mibbit also supports a widget client that can be embedded into a web page. The widget client supports most of the features of the regular client but does not support multiple server connections.

Reception

Mibbit has been praised by

CNET ''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...

and

Lifehacker ''Lifehacker'' is a weblog about life hacks and software that launched on January 31, 2005. The site was originally launched by Gawker Media and is currently owned by G/O Media. The blog posts cover a wide range of topics including: Microso ...

for its ease of use.

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwid ...

administrators use it to add IRC widgets to sites, noting the benefits of its

modular design Modular design, or modularity in design, is a design principle that subdivides a system into smaller parts called ''modules'' (such as modular process skids), which can be independently created, modified, replaced, or exchanged with other modules ...

Mashable Mashable is a digital media platform, news website and entertainment company founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005. History Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July 2005. Early iterations of the site were a ...

suggests Mibbit as an appropriate resource for those new to IRC.

Firefox support

Firefox 3.5 Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is a version of the Firefox web browser released in June 2009, adding a variety of new features to Firefox. Version 3.5 was touted as being twice as fast as 3.0 (due its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine and rendering improveme ...

and beyond builds already support Mibbit as the default IRC protocol handler and support for

encrypted In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...

ircs:// SSL/TLS connections is also included.

Abuse mitigation

Because Mibbit is effectively an IRC

proxy Proxy may refer to: * Proxy or agent (law), a substitute authorized to act for another entity or a document which authorizes the agent so to act * Proxy (climate), a measured variable used to infer the value of a variable of interest in climate re ...

it has the potential to be abused or used to evade bans and blocks. This has resulted in the client being banned from accessing some IRC

networks Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

and channels. Mibbit now supports DNSBL checking via the DroneBL service as a means to help block access from abusive users and

botnet A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its conn ...

s. Mibbit was listed as an

open proxy An open proxy is a type of proxy server that is accessible by any Internet user. Generally, a proxy server only allows users ''within a network group'' (i.e. a closed proxy) to store and forward Internet services such as DNS or web pages to ...

in the DroneBL DNS

blacklist Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, ...

in December 2008, and due to a database glitch mistakenly again listed in March 2009. This prevented Mibbit users from connecting to IRC networks that make use of the DroneBL service. Mibbit was added to DroneBL's

whitelist A whitelist, allowlist, or passlist is a mechanism which explicitly allows some identified entities to access a particular privilege, service, mobility, or recognition i.e. it is a list of things allowed when everything is denied by default. It is ...

to help prevent future service disruptions. On June 19, 2009 it was banned permanently from

freenode Freenode, stylized as freenode and formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network which was previously used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are accessible from the hostname , which load balances connections by us ...

, and a new officially supported

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

AJAX client was introduced.

References

External links

* {{authority control Internet Relay Chat clients Web service providers Web services

Design

Features

Reception

Firefox support

Abuse mitigation

See also

References

Further reading

External links