Microsoft Comic Chat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Microsoft Comic Chat (later Microsoft Chat) is an IRC client created by Microsoft bundled with some Internet-aware versions of Microsoft Windows.
Comic Chat was initially released with Internet Explorer 3.0 in 1996, and was developed by Microsoft Researcher David Kurlander together with the Virtual Worlds Group.
Its main feature, which set it apart from other IRC clients, is that it enabled comic avatars to represent a user; this character could express a specified emotion, possibly making IRC chatting a more emotive and expressive experience. Comic characters and backgrounds were created by comic artist Jim Woodring.
However, the method that this software used to achieve the comic effect was to prepend an unreadable code in parentheses to the plain text of the user's speech, which defined what emotion the character expressed. This had a somewhat annoying effect on non-Comic Chat users. The inclusion of this code could be disabled, but this would result in being unable to transmit characters' emotion states to other Comic Chat users.
Comic Chat is seldom used today, perhaps because of insistence from other non-Comic Chat users that the Comic Chat mode be turned off, as some users found the superfluous text annoying, and because the Microsoft Chat network shut down. The program is used to create the comic strip "Jerkcity".
