IRC
How to ask questions on IRC
Before asking a question, you should ask a smart question.
Next remember that there are better places than IRC to ask questions! Writing out the questions ahead of time allows you to think about the various issues ahead of time before taking up the valuable time of the people on IRC. It also leaves a history of the question or problem that might save someone in the future from asking the same question.
- First try the newsgroups.
- If you can't ask the question publicly, create yourself a email account at the many different online services that provide anonymity, then go to (1).
- If you really can't use the newsgroup, you can try emailing the module owners of your area of interest.
If you must ask on IRC, remember:
- Try to look it up before asking on IRC.
- Be understanding if people on IRC don't have time to answer.
- Keep in mind that people in IRC are often busy working, or in a meeting, and may not be able to respond quickly.
- Be mindful of someone's time when interacting on IRC, and ask focused, to the point questions, and try to think about responses before reacting.
IRC Clients
Some commonly-used IRC clients include:
This list is not comprehensive.
Web clients
These IRC clients are web services and require no installation:
Commonly Used Mozilla IRC Channels
There are many different irc channels for various topics. If you have ChatZilla, you can just click the provided links bellow to join that particular channel. For other clients, connect to server irc.mozilla.org and type /join channelname, replacing channelname with the name of the channel (including the leading "#"). All channels use English unless otherwise specified.
Development and Planning
These channels are frequently used for discussions regarding development and planning of Firefox and Thunderbird.
Project Channels
- #firefox - Firefox project discussion and end-user help
- #thunderbird - Thunderbird project discussion and end-user help
- #seamonkey - Community project to revive the bundled application suite
- #calendar - Lightning and Sunbird calendar clients
- #mozwebtools - Bonsai, LXR, Tinderbox, Bugzilla, and Mozbot project discussion
- #camino - Camino browser for Mac OS X
- #qa - Mozilla QA Community of users and testers dedicated to improving the quality of Firefox and other Mozilla applications
- #calendar - Quality assurance for Lightning and Sunbird calendar clients
- #mozwebqa - Home of Mozilla's web-testing efforts
- #addons - End-user support for extensions, themes and the addons.mozilla.org website
- #extdev - Discussion about extension development
- #themedev - Discussion about theme development
- #xul - Discussion about the XUL programming language
- #js - Discussion about JavaScript programming
- #l10n - Discussion about localization (l10n) of Mozilla applications
- #accessibility - Discussion about accessibility in Mozilla applications - developers and end users welcome
- #mozillazine - Community for Users, Web Authors, and Testers; go here if you need help
- #mozdev - Discussion of and support for free project hosting at mozdev.org
- #songbird - Songbird project discussion
General Discussion
- #planning - discussion of upcoming Firefox and Gecko branch and trunk releases
- #developers - general Firefox and Gecko development discussion
Specific Areas
- #fx-team - Firefox front-end development discussion and team channel
- #gfx - development discussion for graphics, widget and OS-specific code
- #content - development discussion for DOM and layout code as well as Electrolysis
- #jsapi - development discussion for the JavaScript engine & TraceMonkey
- #macdev - OSX developers
- #mobile - Fennec development discussion
- #maildev - Thunderbird development channel
- #seamonkey - SeaMonkey development channel
- #ux - discussion of visual and interactive user experience design for all Mozilla projects
- #labs - discussion of development of Mozilla Labs projects
Channels in Other Languages
Chinese
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Japanese
Norwegian
Polish
Russian
Swedish
Ukrainian
Connection Notice
When you connect to our IRC server, you will get portscanned from 63.245.208.159, 63.245.212.23, or 63.245.216.214. This is an unfortunate but necessary step in order to cut down on the number of viruses and other malicious users attempting to communicate via our IRC servers. The portscan is checking for common ports used by known viruses and open proxy servers to ensure that your machine is not infected before allowing you to remain connected. By connecting to our IRC servers, you agree to have your computer portscanned by our server. If you don't like this, don't connect.
Secure Connections Available
If your IRC client supports SSL, you can connect to irc.mozilla.org on port 6697 with SSL enabled.
Quotes Database
Sometimes people say silly or memorable things on our server. We memorialize them forever on the quotes database managed by Tim De Pauw.
Need General Help with IRC?
Visit irchelp.org to learn about how IRC works, or find a client you can use to connect to the chat server.
Events
BugDay! - Every Tuesday in #bugday
- East Asia/Australia session: 8pm-10pm in Tokyo, Japan (GMT+9)
- Europe/Africa session: 8pm-10pm in Paris, France (GMT+2)
- Americas session: 9pm-11pm in New York, New York (GMT-4) / 6pm-8pm in San Francisco, California (GMT-7)