Chat

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Introduction

Opera has an elegant, integrated chat client with essential features:

• Simultaneous connection to any number of chat servers
• Private person-to-person chat
• Group conversations in rooms
• Room passwords remembered by password manager
• Integration with contact manager in Opera

Getting started

To connect to a room for the first time:

1. Select New account on the Chat menu
2. Fill in your Real name and e-mail address (or something else if you want some privacy)
3. Enter the nickname you would like to appear as in the chat (restricted to 9 characters on some servers)
4. Choose a chat server to connect to

When you have set up the chat account, the list of rooms is automatically downloaded from the server and displayed on screen.

Tip: Search the Web for lists of chat servers

Joining rooms

Select List rooms on the Chat menu to get the list of rooms on a chat server.

• Type in the Quickfind field to find particular rooms
• Click the coloumn headers to sort the room list accordingly
• Double-click a room to join it
• Click to enter a room that does not appear in the list

Room chat

When you join a room, a chat window is displayed. Notice the following details:

• The main part of the window contains the communication between the people in the room
• The number of people and topic for the room are displayed at the top
• The bottom part of the window is for writing your own messages
• Colors are used to distinguish different sorts of messages

The list of people in the room are on the right hand side:

Write a message in the bottom part of the window to say something in the room.

While in a room, you can:

• Right-click a nick in the nick list to
  • Get "whois" information about the person
  • Create contact information for the person
• Click to change your nick

Close the window to leave the room.

Private chat

To chat privately with someone, double-click his or her nick in the list on the right hand side of the room window.

Write a message in the bottom part of the window to say something to the other person.

While chatting privately, you can:

• Create contact information for the person you are chatting with
• Send him an e-mail (if you have created contact information)

Close the window to end the conversation.

Note: If the chat server is loaded, it can take some time before messages are delivered.

Creating rooms

To create your own room and become operator, select New room on the Chat menu and enter the name of the room you wish to create.

You need to pick a room that has not already been created, so you may have to try a few names before you find one that is available.

If a room with your name is already created, you will just join the room as a normal user.

Room operator

When you create a new room, you automatically become operator of the room.

By right-clicking a nick in the nick list, operators can:

• Grant people operator status
• Allow people to talk in the room (for rooms that require "voice")
• Kick misbehaving people from the channel

As operator you can also change the topic of the room.

Chat panel

All rooms you join are saved in the Chat panel, organized under the chat server they belong to.

Double-click a previously visited room to join.

Right-click the list for a multiple choice menu.

Account properties

Select Manage accounts on the Chat menu to fine-tune addition options not available in the account setup wizard.

• Chat server port number (default is 6667)
• Secure connection (required by some chat servers)
• Encoding for international characters (if you see weird characters, ask other people for correct value)

Multiple chat servers

To connect to any number of chat servers, select New account on the Chat menu.

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