Microsoft Comic Chat, a 30-year-old IRC client that helped popularize Comic Sans, goes open source

Microsoft’s once popular IRC client, “Comic Chat,” is being open source to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Those who frequented the World Wide Web in the ’90s will likely remember Comic Chat for being a unique experiment in what IRC chat could be like, featuring graphical avatars that presented chats and chat rooms in comic strip form.

Originally developed by Microsoft researcher David Kurlander and released on August 13, 1996, Comic Chat began as a research project before morphing into Microsoft Chat and becoming the default chat client for MSN.

“Today, we’re excited to announce the open source release of Microsoft Comic Chat, the chat client that automatically turned conversations within Internet Relay Chat (IRC) into comic panels with illustrated characters, speech bubbles, and expressions, and helped introduce the world to a small font called Comic Sans.” Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman announced it today in a blog post.

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“For many people, Comic Chat is a nostalgic artifact from the early days of the Internet when we transitioned from technologies like telnet, Usenet, and IRC to the primarily visual Web we enjoy today. For others, it’s a legendary piece of Microsoft history that they’ve only heard about in stories, screenshots, and discussions about typography. Now, developers, historians, retro computing enthusiasts, and anyone who appreciates a wonderfully unconventional idea can explore the source code for themselves.”