WebIRC

WebIRC is a Sinatra based IRC application, the IRC connection is maintained server-side, and the client is simulated on a web browser using Javascript and JSON.

Why?

It is fairly pointless when you consider that irssi and screen have been around for years, but that assumes you can start a secure shell from anywhere, whereas standards compliant web browsers are fairly ubiquitous.

Installing

WebIRC is a collection of Ruby scripts, so a Ruby interpreter is required (tested with 1.8.6), and the following gems:

sinatra @ http://github.com/bmizerany/sinatra/tree/work
json @ http://json.rubyforge.org/index.html

To install the ruby-gems type sudo gem install ≪gem name≫ at the shell prompt.

Starting

At the command prompt:

$ ruby webserver.rb

The WebIRC interface should now be available at http://localhost:4567/

The switch -p ≪port number≫ can be used to specify a port number to bind to.

See the Rack documentation for details on how to connect a web server to the Rack interface.

Questions?

Why doesn't this appear to work with Internet Explorer?

I've not tested it, but I'm going to assume it doesn't work anyway. My advice would be to use a different browser if possible, my personal choice would be a webkit-based alternative, such as Safari or Chrome.

Contact

Send bugs and general correspondence to mailto:andy.herbert@gmail.com

Credits

Several Javascript frameworks are used on the client side:

Prototype library @ http://www.prototypejs.org/
Lalit Patel's JSON cookies @ http://www.lalit.org/lab/jsoncookies

Falkulator / WebIRC