Unicode was not in wide use when mIRC was first created, so mIRC did not use it. However over the last decade Unicode has become increasingly important and most new applications are now designed with Unicode in mind, so it was important for mIRC to be converted to Unicode to keep pace with technology.

The project to convert mIRC to Unicode has taken the better part of a year and has required tens of thousands of changes to 150,000+ lines of source code.

This has been the most complex and time-consuming update to mIRC since it was created in 1995, when it started out as a non-Unicode, 16-bit, Windows 3.1 application.

Many areas of mIRC have had to be updated or re-written, from file handling to text processing, from display to memory allocation, from server communications to file transfers.

mIRC should now be faster, more stable, and more compatible with the latest versions of Windows, and should be able to better handle the display and input of a variety of languages.

Although the beta has been through a few months of internal testing, there have been so many changes that we feel it needs wider testing to ensure that it is stable.

Once we have received enough feedback and are happy with the way the beta is performing, we will release a final, stable version of mIRC for public use.

Like all new versions of mIRC, the beta makes changes to the way some items are stored in the mirc.ini file that are not compatible with older versions of mIRC.

You should not run the beta from the same folder as another version of mIRC as they will interfere with each other.

If you want to use files and settings from an older version of mIRC, you should copy them to a new empty folder and then install the beta in that folder.

While a lot of effort has gone into making the Unicode version of mIRC compatible with scripts from previous versions of mIRC, it is likely that some will not work correctly. For example:

Scripts that display characters from language-specific codepages, or perform utf-8 conversions, may not display the text that you expect, since mIRC is now a Unicode application.

Scripts that use DLLs that interact with mIRC by manipulating the interface, or other low level interaction, may need to be updated to take into account the fact that mIRC is now a Unicode application.

Scripts that convert between binary and character data may need to be updated, since Unicode applications store characters in two bytes as opposed to one.

The only way to know whether your script will work is to test it out to see whether it behaves as you expect.

Improved Windows 7 compatibility - More reliable INI file handling - Faster text display/scrolling - Speech support - Improved interface design for a number of features - Automatic text color correction - Menubar ALT key show/hide feature - Support for italic text and other font styles - Optimized SSL routines - Status window SSL connection icon - IPv6 support - Improved portable support - Persistent channel history - Digitally signed executables - Split long channel/private messages option - Full screen display with F11 function key - UPnP support - Many bug fixes - And more.

You can find a full list of changes and fixes in the versions.txt file that comes with the beta.

When you run the beta installer, you should enable the Run as Portable Application option and install mIRC to a new empty folder. This will ensure that it does not affect any of your other mIRC files and settings.

This option adds the item portable=yes to the [about] section of the mirc.ini file, which is new to this version.

It is no longer possible to run the new version of mIRC under older versions of Windows, such as Windows 95/98/ME, since they cannot run Unicode applications natively, and any Unicode support that they do have is very limited.

It was only with Windows 2000 and onwards that Unicode became a viable and practical option for most applications.

The beta is only for users who are willing to spend time dealing with bugs and submitting bug reports.

We expect to release many betas over the next few months, so this beta automatically expires after a few weeks.

If you are sure you want to download the beta, click here.

Are you using the latest version of the beta? If not, please download it and check whether the issue is still present - it may have been fixed.

Are you able to reproduce the bug in a clean install of the beta? If not, try to narrow down the issue - it may be due to a script or addon.

Are you able to reproduce the bug in a clean install of mIRC v6.35? If you can, please let us know - it may be an old bug instead of one specific to the beta.

Once you are ready, please post your bug report with a clear description of how to reproduce your bug.