The main panel is the chat screen itself, with its scrolling transcript of people talking. Below it, a text box allows you to enter your own messages in the discussion. Nearby, there will be a constantly changing list of who is logging in and out of the room. The latest developments in free software now translate scrolling IRC text lines into cartoon like graphics. Once installed, the programs make each chat room into a scene.
Chatters select or build their own characters, or avatars.
Inside The Palace chat site, for example, a provocatively posed Cindy Crawford may be posing in the corner of a virtual castle dungeon. Every time Cindy's creator types something into his text box, then hits Enter, a comic striplike balloon appears on screen above her head. Both immediately turn gray, indicating the two are talking privately. The rest of the room continues spouting off in word balloons. Conversations ebb and flow with departures and arrivals in each room.