Once you have connected to a server and the connection is online you can join a channel. The connection status is visible in the console window and the connection list.
Snak supports the /join and /channel commands, but it also provides quicker, more user-friendly ways of joining channels.
To join a channel using the input field in either the console window, the connection list or an existing channel window, type /join or /channel followed by the channel name. Snak supports many command shortcuts, so you can also type /j instead of /join.
To leave a channel you can use the /part command, or just close the window.
If you use the shared windows option (You should :-) ) there may be multiple channels in a window. In that case cmd-w will close the active channel and the window will go away when the last channel is closed. To close all channels in a window at once, click in the close box of the window.
Joining Automatically
If you find yourself joining the same channels every time you log onto IRC, it may save you some time to have Snak automatically join the channels when it connects. There are several ways to automatically join channels in Snak.
Leave channel windows open:
Snak will remember what channel windows you had open when you quit the program. When you launch it next time these windows will be re-opened, and when you open the associated connection the program will join the channels.
Specify a startup action:
Open the Connection record and type /join <channelname> (without the brackets) in the startup actions field. There can only be one command per line, but the field can accept multiple lines.
Using the Channel List window
In the Channel List window (described later) you can double click on the channels to join them.
Joining Manually
The easiest way to join channels is to use the File/Join menu or the cmd-J menu shortcut.
 
That will open the Join channel dialog where you can enter the name of the desired channel. This dialog also contains a list of favorite channels that you can double click or select to join.
Use the Add…, Delete and Edit… buttons to manage the favorite list.
After you enter the /join command or use the Join channel dialog, a command will be sent to the server that you wish to join the channel. Some channels require a password to access or have limitations on how many users may participate so you may or may not gain entrance.
If the channel requires a password to enter, you will have to type in the command "/join <channel> <password>" with a space between the channel name and the password.
The channel window is opened immediately after entering the command, but the server still have to acknowledge that you have entered the channel. Once that has happened, you will see a message "You have entered the channel" in the text area of the channel window. At that point you can engage in normal IRC conversations.
Congratulations : You are now online on the Internet Relay Chat network :-)
In addition to this dialog, you can also join channels through the Tools/Channel menu. The contents of this menu can be chosen in the favorites list in the Join dialog as shown above.
To add a channel to this menu, select it in the list and press edit. In the dialog that comes up place a check mark in the check box.
If you know other IRC clients you may know that channel names always start with a '#' character. In Snak you may omit that character, since the program is smart enough to add it when necessary.
Getting a channel List
Another way of joining a channel is to ask the IRC server to provide a list of all available channels
To obtain a channel list, use the File/List Channels menu.
 
That will display the List channels dialog where you can set up the criteria for the listing. You can specify that you want to see channels containing certain words but not others. As an example, you can specify that you want to see channels with at least 10 users but not more that 20, whose names contain "windows" but not "rules".
Pressing OK will send the command off to the server. Be advised that on some servers, the List command will result in so much data being sent to you that the server will disconnect you . . .
Snak will begin filtering the information based on the criteria that you specified, as soon as the server responds.
Once a valid channel is found, Snak will open a Channel List window and display the channel name and information. You can also open this by typing the /list command
 
You can join a channel from the Channel list by double clicking on the channel entry in the list.
Snak will enable the Save button in the Channel list window when the server is done listing the channels, and then you can save the listing to a file.
While the channel list is receiving information from the server, a rotating arrow will indicate the activity.
The Channel list window supports a Find and Find Again function that will let you search the found channels. The search is case sensitive.
