# Chat

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Opera has an elegant, integrated chat client with essential features:

- Simultaneous connection to any number of chat servers
- Private person-to-person chat
- Group conversations in rooms
- Room passwords are remembered by password manager
- Integration with Opera's contact manager

## Getting started

To connect to a room for the first time:

1. Select New account on the Chat menu
2. Fill in your real name and e-mail address (or something else if you want some privacy)
3. Enter the nickname as you would like it to appear in the chat (this is restricted to 9 characters on some servers)
4. Choose a chat server to connect to

When you have set up a chat account, the list of rooms is automatically downloaded from the server and displayed.

Tip: Search the Web for lists of chat servers

## Joining rooms

Select List rooms on the Chat menu to get the list of rooms on a chat server.

- Type in the Quickfind field to find particular rooms
- Click the column headers to sort the room list accordingly
- Double-click a room to join it
- Click to enter a room that does not appear in the list

## Room chat

When you join a room, a chat page is displayed. Notice the following details:

- The main part of the page contains the communication between the people in the room
- The number of people and the topic for the room are displayed at the top
- The field at the bottom of the page is for writing your own messages
- Colors are used to distinguish different sorts of messages

The list of people in the room is on the right-hand side:

Indication | Meaning
--- | ---
Bold nick | Operator (user with special permissions)
Normal icon | People you have added in your contact list
Ghosted icon | People not in your contact list

Write a message in the field at the bottom to say something to the room.

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

## More Chat Room Actions

While in a room, you can also:

- Right-click a nick in the right-hand list to
  - Get "whois" information about the person
  - Save and edit contact information for the person
  - Start a private chat with the person
  - Send the person an e-mail message if you have the address
  - Send the person a file
- Click to change your nick
- Catch someone's attention by starting a message with their nick. 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.
- Type "/me" to initiate a spoken "action" in the chat room, for example "/me sings"

## Private chat

Double-clicking a nick will also initiate a private chat. When chatting privately, a small toolbar is displayed with the same options as the right-click menu of the nick list.

When someone sends you a private message to start a chat, you will see a new page popping up with the person's nick on the page tab.

## Smileys

Several combinations of characters will produce graphical smileys when used in a chat session or an e-mail message:

Smiley | Characters | Description
--- | --- | ---
| :) :-) =) | Happy face
| :( :-( | Unhappy face
| ;) ;-) | Winking face
| :o :-O | Surprised face
| :D :-D | Grinning face
| 8-) 8-D | Cool face
| :| :-| | Indifferent face
| :'( | Crying face
| :@ :-@ | Angry face
| :p :-P | Face sticking tongue out
| '< | Pacman

## Creating rooms

To create your own room and become operator, select New room on the Chat menu and enter the name of the room you wish to create.

You need to pick a room that has not already been created, so you may have to try a few names before you find one that is available. If a room with the name you chose is already created, you will just join the room as a normal user.

## 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 chat room

Operators can also change the topic of the room by clicking the "Properties" button in the room toolbar.

## Chat panel

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

You will also see a list of all contacts that are logged on to the same server, provided you have added their chat nicks to their contact information. Click a nick to start a private chat.

## Account properties

Select Manage accounts on the Chat menu to find additional options not available in the account setup wizard.

- 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)

## Multiple chat servers

To connect to any number of chat servers, select New account on the Chat menu.

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