Chatzilla is the name of the
Internet Relay Chat (
IRC) client included with
mozilla. Chatzilla is one of the first, and probably the most successful to date, applications written upon the
mozilla framework. The strengths of mozilla are, of course, exploited by Chatzilla: the fact that it is written completely in
JavaScript and
XUL speaks volumes for the versatility of mozilla as a platform. It can be
scripted, in
JavaScript, naturally, and it uses
Cascading Style-Sheets (
CSS) to set the "
motif", or look-and-feel.
Chatzilla handles all the IRC basics, but lacks a few advanced features. In particular, it lacks support for logging and support for DCC, or Direct Client Connections, which means it cannot do direct, client-to-client chatting or file transfers. However, Chatzilla is highly usable for chatting, IRC's raison d'être, and is well suited to the casual IRC user.
Chatzilla can be started in mozilla by selecting IRC Chat from the Window menu, starting mozilla with the "-chat" command line option, or by clicking on an irc:// URL within a web page.