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4 - Fonts & Colours
- 1 - Changing the Font
One of the first things you will probably want to do with mIRC is change the default font, as, lets face it, fixedsys ain't that appealing. To change the default font, click on the Tools menu, then select font (shortcut is ALT+V). You'll get this, a fairly standard 'choose your font' window.
The options shown are what I use for my 11" laptop monitor at 800x600 resolution. Many people will have bigger screens, higher resolutions etc.., so may want to change the font size. It is after all entirely down to personal choice, you may absolutely adore the Engravers MT font, I, as you can see, find myself right at home with Comic Sans MS. Please note that changing the font options like this changes the font of both incoming and outgoing messages. There is no way to distinguish yourself from someone else by using a different font like you can in a lot of different chat and internet messaging programs.
- 2 - Colours
The main colours options can be reached using either the Tools->Colours menu, the ALT+K shortcut, or the colours button (
) in the toolbar at the top. This will bring up this box:
I personally find that the default colour scheme works fine, and i have found no reason to change it, but others may be allergic to green or something and want to change it to something else. The process is very simple, merely select the thing the colour of which you want to change, then choose a different colour.
- 3 - Bold, Underline and More Colours
- Bold
To use bold when typing text into the channel, use CTRL+B to start the bold, and CTRL+B again to end it. A little character "" will appear to mark where you have used CTRL+B.- Underline
Works the same as Bold, just use CTRL+U instead of CTRL+B- Colours
To get colours into your text, use CTRL+K. Again you'll see the pop up, along with a little box that looks like this:
now you can either click on the colour you want, or type in it's number. For example if you wanted red text, you'd type CTRL+K, then 4, resulting in 4. You can also type in a comma then a second number for a background colour: 4,14 would be red text on a dark gray backround. You can put in as many different colours into a line as you want, just remember that one colour doesn't stop until you instruct it to use a new one, even if that is just the default black on white.
- Bold
- 4 - Automatically Highlighting Text
Use ALT+O or the menus to open up the mIRC options window. Under the IRC section, you'll find a "Highlight" section. Click on Highlight.
Automatically highlighting text is useful if you can't pay full attention to all the chat thats going on. You can make mIRC automatically show any line with your name in it highlight in a different colour (I use red). When adding text that should be highlighted, take a moment to think about what you need... I have my whole nickname, and a couple of shortened versions of it that other people commonly refer to me by all picked up so I know when someone is talking to me. To enable this facilitly, make sure the "Enbale Highlighting" box is checked, then click on "Add". This will give you a box that looks like this:
In the top box put the words you want highlighted, separated by commas, e.g. nickname,nick. You can then choose what you want to happen when someone else types this text- you can highlight it in a particular character, flash a message up, or even play a sound.
- 1 - Changing the Font