Connecting to IRC with Pidgin (Gaim) is very easy! The drawback is that it opens MANY windows on connect (a window for each notice message), but you can close them. Once you are connected, it looks pretty good! Let's test it out and connect to irc.ablenet.org

1. Open main Pidgin window, select Accounts from the top menu, and then click Add/Edit.

2. The new window will pop-up, with all the accounts you added. Click Add button in the bottom, yet another window will pop-up.

3. Select Protocol: IRC from the drop down menu. Enter your name in Screen Name field. Put your server into Server field (in our case irc.ablenet.org). Ignore Password and Local alias fields.

It should look like this:




4. Now go to the Advanced tab. You can change port and encoding if needed, but usually the default value works well. Enter your Username, and put something under Real Name. Click Save.

5. After you click save, Pidgin will connect you to the IRC Network. Additional windows might open if the server sends you any notices. Look for main server window.

In our case:




6. Now you can use standard IRC commands, such as /join or /list. Type /join #ablenet to join main AbleNET channel. A new window or (tab if you use tabbed windows) will appear. Tabbed windows would work better with IRC.

Here is how it looks:



Now you can chat! Don't forget that many of the people won't see Icons you are using for smiles.

Good luck!