Introduction to Chatting for the Novice

There are two basic kinds of webpage chat. One is dedicated webpage chat. You can find webpage chat sites all over the net these days. An example of dedicated web based chat is City Live. It's one of the better ones, and if you'd like to try it, go to their homepage by clicking here.

The second kind of webpage chat is usually setup by an individual on their homepage. There are a myriad of different kinds of webpage chats. Most have several chat rooms to choose from, but there are usually very few chatters present. Don't be surprised if you find most of the rooms are sexually oriented.

Webpage chat is quite simple, but it is also limited with respect to it's capabilities. On most, all you can DO is chat. Some of the more sophisticated sites now have some advanced features found in stand-alone IRC clients. Things like changing colors of text or sending sounds to other users. Some have also incorporated a few IRC commands such as the ability to change nicknames, ban users from the channel, and a few basic operator commands. You still can't send and receive files. You can't run scripts or customize anything about the chat interface. Webchat is often very slow compared to other forms of chatting, but they are getting better all the time.