Chat Core is the shared code for instant messaging that is shared by Instantbird and Thunderbird. It provides a number of functions and capabilities, including:
- Communications protocols - IRC, Twitter, XMPP, Yahoo! Messenger
- Message styles
- Account configuration
- Contacts storage
- Message logging
- Emoticon (smileys) handling
The Chat Core code lives in the chat/ directory of comm-central.
- Chat Core Protocols
- The Chat Core code used by Instantbird and Thunderbird has some abstractions to deal with the differences between protocols (e.g. IRC vs. XMPP).
- Contacts
- Contacts are at the heart of instant messaging, and thus the Chat Core has a way to abstract to a "person" (represented by an
imIContactinstance), which might connect to multiple networks, etc. - Keyboard shortcuts
- This is a list of keyboard shortcuts that are available in Instantbird/Thunderbird with brief descriptions of what they do.
- Message Styles
- Chat Core uses a message style system based on HTML, JS and CSS that is very similar to the one created for Adium. If you plan to create a message style for Instantbird or Thunderbird, reading the Adium documentation on the topic may be helpful -- see this tutorial and this reference sheet.
- Notifications
- This is a page for documenting the notifications in Instantbird and Thunderbird. This is likely out of date. Notifications are grouped by interface you need to attach the observer to.
- Smiley Themes
- A smiley theme for Chat Core (used by Instantbird and Thunderbird) is very easy to create, it contains a bunch of image files, a theme.js file and the necessary packaging around it to make it an extension.
See pages tagged Chat Core for additional chat core-specific information.