curiousities - Microsoft Comic Chat

back in the halcyon days of the 90s and early 00's, IRC clients were a pretty popular way for people to message each other and host chatrooms where likeminded people could gather around and talk about things. of course, with instant messengers like MSN and Skype and the like becoming more widely used in today's more streamlined era, IRC chat clients saw a significant decline in use (from one million users in 2003 to around 400,000 in 2014, according to Wikipedia).

of course, that doesn't mean IRC chatting as a whole has dropped off the face of the earth. while it has gone scarce, there are quite a few communities around the net who still host IRC servers for people to chat about stuff, and of course IRC clients still exist. one of which we're going to talk about today.

i'll be honest, i know very little about IRC stuff aside from this one client and the Wiki page, but hey, having your chats in comic form is always rad, innit?

Microsoft Chat (sometimes called Microsoft Comic Chat or just Comic Chat) was released in 1996 by... well, Microsoft. it was bundled with the full downloads of Internet Explorer 3, 4, and 5, though distributions of Windows 98 and 2000 included the program as well. for quite some time, it was Microsoft's main chat program until some time around 2001, thanks to MSN discontinuing the official Comic Chat servers.

of course, that didn't spell the complete end of the program; being an IRC-based client, it still works with a lot of IRC servers out there today since it runs on the same standard protocols. course, there's a bit more to Comic Chat than that, obviously.