I'm administrating a homepage with an IRC-Webclient.

At the moment, it uses a Java-client, modified to be SSL-compatible and compatible with whatever design I want to use. The usual PJIRC thing, with users wishes and concerns implemented (I'll give you SSL-PJIRC if you want - no problem. The login-script will be improved for IE6-support this weekend, means write the object tag if an old IE is found, that's it. Rest runs perfectly well).

But still, the better user experience would be a client that only requires the user to enable JavaScript.

So, before I go into rewriting and customizing a complete Java-IRC-solution, I'd like to ask some other people - after researching for half a year of time.

The requirements are:

a) Free hosting, no cgi-bin is acceptable. A lot of hosters also have CGI supported, but it doesn't allow IRC-access. So, seems you are limited to x10-hosting for CGI:IRC.

b) Solution must be open source (not free as in free beer, but free as in free speech - I want to be able to read every line of the code).

c) Hosting cannot be limited to Windows-hosting. Free operation systems (anything with Linux, BSD, whatever - I think you get what I mean) must be possible.

d) No server-side technology. I'm limited to everything that runs client-side only. (Well, a Java-Applet does...).

d) Solution must support SSL.

e) The side must be able to move. Means, you register to a new free hoster, load your things up via FileZilla and the thing simply runs. No server-concerning implementations needed.

f) Old browsers must be supported.

From all my research, there are two ways

a) Java-Applet

b) Use HTML5-Websockets (it is impossible to use the JavaScript-library I found, as it depends on ActiveX - means, Windows hosting).

b) means "you are going to enter very unstable content". I worked with HTML5 for month, and, well ... Though, HTML5 also is not suitable for older browsers (old browser support is an absolutely necessary requirement).

PHP by the way is a server side solution ... so no line of PHP.

My idea now was a Java Applet, and a fallback which again is embedded and proprietary, but only requieres JavaScript (wsirc or Mibbit are great here, whilst I prefer wsirc ... and zooming fonts that are plainly to small, but worse, cannot read the code).

So my question is - with free hosting, not installation on server, plain upload - do you see and open source, complelety client-side, ssl-compatible way to use or write a client?

This wouldn't be my first programming project, I'm not afraid of the code. If there was a way and I had to write it, even from scratch, I'd do.

From all I know, there sadly is none. But maybe some experienced admin has an idea?

Best Wishes, yetanotheruser

Sry my English isn't perfect. It's enough for programming at least.