Chat

Opera provides an integrated chat client with all the essential features you need to easily communicate.

Start chatting

To connect to a room for the first time:

1. Go to Mail and Chat Accounts
2. Click "Add", then select "Chat (IRC)".
3. Fill in your real name (or something else if you want more privacy) and your email address .
4. Enter the nickname (nick) as you would like it to appear in the chat. This may be restricted to 9 characters on some servers.
5. Choose a chat server to connect to.
6. Click "Finish" to create the account. The list of available rooms is automatically downloaded from the server and displayed.
7. Select a room from the list by double-clicking it. For more information, see the Find a chat room topic below.
8. A new tab opens with the chat toolbar and chat window displayed.
   • The main part of the chat window shows the communication between all the people in the room
   • The number of people and the topic for the room are shown at the top
   • The list of people in the room is on the right-hand side. If a name is bold, the person is an operator, with special administrative permissions.
9. To say something in the room, write a message in the input field at the bottom and press Enter. To add personality, add a graphical smiley from selecting the Smiley button on the Chat toolbar. Also see the Chat shortcuts and smileys topic below.

Note: If there are many users on a chat server, it can take some time before messages are delivered.

Find a chat room

To display a list of available rooms at any time, from the chat toolbar, click the List Rooms button. The Chat Rooms dialog displays.

• To find a particular room, type a search query in the search field.
• To sort the room list, click the column headers.
• To join a room, double-click it.
• To enter a room that does not appear in the list, click "Add". See more information in the Create a chat room topic below.

All rooms you join are saved in the Chat panel, grouped under the relevant chat server. Click the name of a previously visited room to join.

Use Chat

Action	How to do it
Get someone's attention	Start a message with their nick (nickname). Type the first letters of the nick and press Tab to auto-complete. This will highlight the message on the person's screen in most chat clients.
Denote a spoken "action"	Type "/me" then action, for example "/me sings". Spoken actions appear in magenta.
Change your nick (name)	Click Change nick and type a new name.
Update your status	Click the Status button on the toolbar and select a status. This is useful if you are talking on the phone or have to leave your desk for a while
Start a private chat	Double-click a nick or right-click a nick in the right-hand list. When chatting privately, a small toolbar is displayed with the same options as the right-click menu of the nickname list.
Accept a private chat request	When someone sends you a private message to start a chat, a new tab pops up with the person's nick on the tab. Click the tab and chat.
Get information about someone in the chat room	Right-click a nick in the right-hand list and select "Who is".
Save or edit contact information	To link someone's chat nickname to their information in your contacts list, select "Add Nickname to Contact". When you do this, their nickname will display in the Chat panel whenever they are logged on to the same server. You can click the name to start a private chat. To edit other information, see Change contact properties in the Opera Mail tutorial.
Send someone an email message	Right-click their nick in the right-hand list and select "Send email". This is only possible if you have recorded their email address. For more information, see the Manage chat room contacts topic in the Opera Mail tutorial.
Send someone a file	Right-click their nick in the right-hand list and select "Send file".

Create a chat room

To create your own chat room and become the operator, click the List Rooms button from the toolbar and enter the name of the room you wish to create. Room names cannot be duplicated so if your choice is taken, you need to pick a different name. If a room with the name you chose is already created, you will just join the room as a normal user.

Room settings

In some rooms, only operators may change settings, such as the room's topic, visibility in room lists, and password protection. Click "Properties" on the toolbar to see if you are allowed to change any of these.

Room operator

When you create a new room, you automatically become operator of the room. When right-clicking a nick in the list, operators get a "Control" sub-menu that lets them:

• Grant and take away operator status
• Allow or deny people to talk in the room ("voice")
• Kick misbehaving people from the channel

Account properties

Go to Mail and Chat Accounts to fine-tune your account settings, such as:

• 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 the correct value to use for your language)

Note that you can set up as many accounts as you like, which allows you to connect to multiple chat servers simultaneously.

Chat shortcuts and smileys

Chat room commands

There are toolbar buttons and menu choices available for most of your chat command needs, but if you prefer to type commands, you can use standard IRC commands while chatting in Opera. These are some of the most frequently used commands:

• /j or /join [name of room] to join a particular chat room.
• /msg [nickname] [message] to send a private message to another user.
• /nick [nickname] to change your own nickname.
• /whois [nickname] to get more information about a user.
• /invite [nickname] [name of room] to invite a user to your chat room.
• /part [name of room] to leave a particular room.
• /quit to disconnect from chat.

Smileys

To add personality to your chat, you can use graphical smileys from the chat toolbar. If you prefer, you can use shortcuts to produce smileys, as outlined below.

Smiley	Characters	Description
	:) :-) =)	Happy
	:( :-(	Unhappy
	;) ;-)	Winking
	:o :-O	Surprised
	:D :-D	Grinning
	8-) 8-D	Cool
	:| :-|	Indifferent
	:'(	Crying
	:@ :-@	Angry
	:p :-P	Cheeky
	'<	Biting

Related topic

• Email and news