Introduction

Welcome to DMDirc 0.4. This is the fourth major release of DMDirc, and offers over 100 bug fixes and improvements over DMDirc 0.3. 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/. DMDirc 0.4 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 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 0.4. See the complete changelog for a full list of changes: http://code.google.com/p/dmdirc/wiki/ChangelogNoughtPointFour.

Actions and plugins

Actions provide a way for you to make the client respond to events in certain ways, and basically provide a subset of the functionality of scripting in other clients (e.g. mIRC), but in a much more user-friendly manner. The client ships with some default actions, which provide colour notifications for different events in channels and basic nickname highlighting. You can create, edit and delete actions using the built in action manager, accessible via the settings menu. See http://blog.dmdirc.com/2007/05/11/introducing-actions/ for more information on actions.

Plugins on the other hand are compiled Java code, which means that plugin developers can have them do almost anything they want, but it also means that you require a fairly good understanding of Java to be able to create a plugin. A few plugins are included with the client, and these provide functionality such as channel and query logging, system tray support, and a variety of other features. For more information on plugins you can read the following dev-blog entry: http://blog.dmdirc.com/2007/05/26/plugins/.

Rewritten textpane and search

The textpane has been rewritten, which should make for a better end-user experience by increasing speed and usability. All windows in DMDirc can now be searched through a built in search bar, accessed via F3 or ctrl+f.

Update checker

The client now has a built-in update checker, which will notify DMDirc users of updates within 24 hours of their release, thus hopefully minimising the number of people running out-of-date (and potentially insecure) versions.

Future versions

We have many plans for DMDirc in the future.

Some of the features we still have left to implement include full internationalisation (allowing the client to be translated into different languages), native installers for major operating systems (removing the need for zip files), support for server lists and auto-connecting to servers, and many more...

Contact us

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