I started IRC’ing roughly about 1997. It was a long  time ago, in any case. I started because my best friend told me about it.  We used to run BBS’s together for many years, and quite enjoyed chatting with other people online the multiline local BBS’s. But it was rather limited, and by the late 1990′s, BBS’s were starting to die in lieu of the Internet.  So I gave it a try, and I did not like it at all. But I think it was because of the program I was using, I just didn’t get it. So about a year later, I gave it a try again, and got hooked. I started out on Dalnet, but soon found Undernet, and frequented a few channels there, mainly #vb and #cars. It was not long before I realized all the politics involved in IRC, channel administration, and such. And I was hooked, to say the least. To this day, I still sit on Undernet in the #vb channel, as a channel admin.

After about 2 years, I started complaining about the current client I was using to some fellow IRC’ers on Undernet, saying it lacked some important features I wanted. I had tried many various clients, and there were a fair amount back then (2000) but one thing I really saw lacking, was good, easy support for connecting to multiple servers. Sure, there may have been ways to do it, but it did not make it very easy nor intuitive. And forget about keeping seperate settings for each different server, that was next to non-existant.

And of course, being a developer, it kind of intrigued my curiosity. But I had never made an application like this before, my specialty was creating database driven apps (like MS Access/Jet) and building applications really specialized for specific clients, not available to the public.

So someone basically dared me, saying, let’s see if you can make something better. So, I thought, yes, why not. That was the end of August 2000.  This shouldn’t take me too long. Boy oh boy, I had it coming. It really took me a couple of years of fiddling around with it before I really started to get a handle on what I was doing with the client, to get good direction with it. But I never released my program out to the real world for about 1 1/2 years, because simply put, it was not good enough. So I just distributed it out to some friends, and got suggestions on what to do, and went from there.

Well, I tell you now, I NEVER thought I would be still doing this 10 years later.  But here we are, 10 years later, the client is more popular then it has ever been, and even though the brand new version is taking longer then I anticipated to release, it is still being worked  on.

Also, I ran my own IRC Server for IceChat, so I could just connect and flood it out testing the client, and not bother anyone. I actually had gotten K-Lined from Dalnet for connecting way to many times with ‘invalid clients’, they thought I was some kind of a rogue bot. I explained to them that I was simply testing out a brand new IRC Client I was developing, and they told me to go elsewhere. So I thought the easiest thing to do was create my own server. The first few versions of IceChat connected to my server initially, and I decided to put my own official #icechat support channel on my own server.

Then in 2003, I had found out on QuakeNet there was a large #icechat channel there run by some people there. It was actually a larger channel then on my own server. So I started to frequent that channel more, and it was about 1 or 2 months later, that my IRC server was DDOS’ed, so I decided to take it down, and move the official #icechat support channel to QuakeNet in November 2003. And the channel is still there as of today.

For more information about the history of the development of IceChat, please visit the Screenshots/History Section

A new binary install should be released when the majority of the DCC Send/Receive featured are added.

Also added a couple more DCC options in the IceChat Options window, default File Receving/Sending folders, and a place to put your IP Address if the client can not automatically detect it on connection.

Read the full change log for any further information.

http://www.icechat.net/site/icechat-2009/icechat-2009-changelog/

Visit http://icechat.codeplex.com to get the latest source code or full install, as well as the the latest changelog.

Thanks to everyone for your continued patience with all the changes, fixes, and the few bugs that come along the way.

Please feel free to leave any comments, and if you wish to make any suggestions, or major problems you have found, please leave them in the Forums.

This Alpha release is very stable, and you should not have any major problems with it, you just may find some options missing.

Thank you to all who have helped with the testing of IceChat 2009.

This is to add the default servers and settings into IceChat.

Make sure IceChat is closed when running the FirstRun program. You only need to run the FirstRun program once.

We are still looking for people to help out with the project. Feel free to drop by #icechat2009 channel on irc.quakenet.org if you are interested.

IceChat 2009 is being written in C# .Net 2.0 using Visual C# 2008 Express Edition, which is freely downloadable from Microsoft’s Website. With using .Net, IceChat 2009 will be available across multiple platforms using the Mono Cross Platform .Net Cross Platform Framework.

We ask that your network has been running for at least 6 months, and that you have a valid web page as well.

Let us know your web page, and how to contact you.

Thanks