For the longest time, I was a dedicated user of Snak as my IRC client of choice on my Powerbook. It’s fast, clean, and very scriptable. It also allowed me to automatically sign on and authorize my nickname on multiple servers and channels, something that is kind of a pain with mIRC (my chosen IRC client for Windows and the one I run everyday at work).
As nice as Snak is, there are things about it that bug the hell out of me. There are issues with context menus misbehaving. The UI is looking extremely dated (anything pre-Panther looks old to me). It has too any windows for managing connection data. And, over all, Snak still feels more like a Mac port of mIRC than a native Mac application.
A few days ago I started using another Mac IRC client called Conversation, and it is really growing on me. Like Snak, it can automatically connect to and authorize multiple servers and channels. Also like Snak, Conversation is fast and scriptable. That about where the similarities end.
Here are some things that I really like about Conversation that don’t exist in Snak:
- Channels with unread messages are flagged with a little badge showing the number of unread messages instead of just a color change.
- Server and channel connections are managed in a single pane in the main window.
- Each user is flagged with a different color in the message window, making it much easier to track conversations.
- The brushed metal window feels a lot more like iChat’s UI, which I really like.
- Shortcut keys for switching channels go to next/previous unread channels by default.
- Growl notification windows are supported.
- Custom AppleScripts are accessible as /commands.
I really like the last two features. Growl is a really cool open source notification system for OS X. Supported applications can use Growl to display notifications in temporary popup windows that look a lot like Apple’s Dashboard-style windows and the application switcher. The type of notifications Growl will display are customizable per application. I presently have Conversation configured to display a Growl notification
Using AppleScripts as /commands is also really neat. Practically speaking, this isn’t any different than writing custom ircII scripts, which is the standard for both Snak and mIRC. Snak also supports AppleScript, so, at first, this might not seem like a big deal. The thing with Conversation’s AppleScript support is that you can use the same AppleScript file as a /command and from the Script menu. There is no need to write one script with a custom command name for typed access and another script to be included in a context menu for mouse access. One script does it all.
Even though I paid the shareware fee for Snak a couple of years ago, I’m probably going to ditch it for Conversation, which is completely free. It does everything I need an IRC client to do. It looks and feels like an OS X application. And Conversation has a bunch of the little things that make using IRC a more pleasant and visually interesting experience than any other client out there.
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