❶

This is called the Input Line. It appears only when the current tab is a channel. To send a message to everyone in the channel, type the message here and press Enter. Your message, as well as everyone else's messages appear in the channel scroll above. Each message is preceded by the time and user's nickname.

You can also paste text from the clipboard. If the pasted text has more than one line (newlines), a dialog box appears. Edit the text as desired and click OK.

If the pasted text is longer than 256 characters, or it contains more than one line, a warning message appears advising you that large postings can cause connection resets and flooding. You can still proceed with the input, but doing so is a bad idea, as flooding will annoy other users in the channel, or you may be disconnected from the server. It is better to send the message in shorter chunks.

A convention used in many channels is to precede messages directed at one user with their nickname. Konversation provides a convenient nickname completion feature. Start typing the user's nickname, then press Tab. Konversation will complete the rest of the user's nickname followed by a colon. To customize the completion feature, choose Settings → Configure Konversation from the main menu, expand Behavior, click on General, and select a Completion mode.

You can also enter an IRC command here by first typing / followed by a valid IRC command. See Frequently-used IRC commands. On some servers, you can type /help for a list of available commands, or type /help command for help on a specific command.

❷

You may join additional servers and channels. Each server and each channel gets a separate tab here. To display a list of available channels, see Listing available channels. To join a channel, type: /join #channelname in the Input Line. (The # is required.) To leave a channel, just type /part. Tabs also appear here if you open a Channel List, participate in a private conversation (query), open the URL Catcher, or open one or more Konsoles. To switch the display to a different screen, click the corresponding tab, or use the mouse wheel to cycle through the tabs.

To set other options for tabs, choose Settings → Configure Konversation from the main menu, expand Interface, click on Tabs or expand Notifications and click on Tabs.

❸

These LEDs will blink when there is something you haven't seen in that tab. The LED will blink slower when the only unseen messages are join, part, quit, or nickname changes. They blink faster if there are unseen regular messages. The colors are as follows:

❹

Click here to close the current tab. Closing a Channel tab will leave the channel. Closing a Server Messages tab will leave all channels you've joined, close all open queries at that server and disconnect from the server.

❺

Click this button to change your own nickname. It appears only when the current tab is a channel. To hide this button, choose Settings → Configure Konversation from the main menu, expand Interface, click on Chat Window, and uncheck Show box to change own nickname box.

❻

The channel topic is displayed here. Hover the mouse over the topic to see long topics. You can change the topic by clicking the button to the left of the topic. To hide channel topics, choose Settings → Configure Konversation from the main menu, expand Interface, click on Chat Window, and uncheck the Show channel topic box.

❼

These buttons display the current state of channel modes. A button is down if that mode is on. If you have the correct privileges, you can also change channel modes by clicking on these buttons, or click the button to the left of the topic. To hide channel mode buttons, choose Settings → Configure Konversation from the main menu, expand Interface, click on Chat Window, and uncheck the Show channel mode buttons box.

❽

This is called the Nick Panel. It is displayed whenever the current tab is a channel. It lists the nicknames of all the users who have joined the channel, including yourself. Hover the mouse pointer over a nickname to display additional information about the user. You may change how the icons are displayed next to each nickname by changing the nickname icon theme. See Configuring nickname themes for more information. The Default Theme, as shown in the screen above, uses the following icons:

In addition, if a user is away, a small clock will be drawn in the corner of the icon.

Click with the right mouse button on any nickname to display a context menu of operations you can perform with that nickname. For example, you can send a file to the nickname.

To hide the Nick Panel, choose Settings → Show Nicklist from the main menu.

❾

These are called the Quick Buttons. By default, they are not shown. To display them, see Configuring Quick Buttons. You can customize their definitions to whatever commands you wish.