Happy New Year! It’s been a while since we’ve updated, so there’s a heap of changes to go through.

First off, in WG news, we’ve introduced a new site design and a new logo for IRCv3, thanks primarily to dan- and jwheare! Here’s our new logo, in a variety of formats:

On the spec side, we’ve added the new message-tags draft ^[link] which introduces the TAGMSG message, allowing clients to pass metadata to each other freely. This spec also increases the size limit on tags from 512 to 4607 bytes, letting clients have more room to pass each other data.

The reply client tag draft ^[link] has been added, which allows clients to specify that a message is in reply to another specific message. There’s also an extended post about it here on the IRCCloud blog. This allows for things like the new client tag below!

The react client tag draft ^[link] allows clients to send a ‘reaction’ to another message. This is similar to how users in other chat systems can reply to specific messages with emoji and other characters.

The preload key was added to STS ^[link], which allows servers to advertise that clients can include it in bundled STS preload lists. We’ve also ratified STS, so it’s fine to implement and use in production!

We’ve also added a draft specifying the widespread WEBIRC command ^[link]. This command is used by web-based IRC clients to pass through the real IP address of a connecting user, and having a concrete specification should help this command stay standard in the future – as well as allowing us to extend it in a backwards-compatible way.

We’ve also gotten some brand new proposals in! First off there’s the editmsg PR, which allows clients to edit their messages after sending them!

The migrate PR allows servers to cleanly migrate clients from one server to another, ensuring no message history is lost. This makes server maintenance much less impactful, allowing network operators to migrate clients away from a troubled server or portion of the network.

The message-status PR lets clients indicate that they’re typing, and whether a message has been delivered/read.

The rename PR lets users rename channels. This is especially useful on networks with stricter naming guidelines like Freenode.

The resume PR allows clients to better handle when they accidentally disconnect from the network and need to reconnect. It lets them avoid having to NS GHOST their old nickname, and instead simply take over from where they left off (with some missing chat history).