Below is a screenshot (click on it for a full-sized shot) of my current irssi setup. The visibles are as follows:
- nicklist.pl perl script for the nicklist on the right. It is redrawn on screen for every part/join and every channel change. Really nice. I run it in screen mode rather than fifo mode. I would rather deal with one terminal than two.
- madcow.theme as my main irssi theme. Yes, even though irssi is a console application, there are themes to customize the look. I like madcow the best. It has a tight overall theme integration, and the indented nicks on the left are a must. The colors work well with each other and they are strong.
- Split windows are the only way to go with irssi. As pictured, I have 3 containers managing the channels (windows) that I am in. This way, I can keep updated on the channels that I frequent the most (I’m in 16 channels on freenode currently). The only problem is being able to know what window you are in before sending a message.
- Theme hacking for split windows is a must. With the default theme, it difficult to know what channel you are in. You have to look at the status bar, and see where it is located before sending. This isn’t enough, so I made the active status bar bright red as a better visual clue to where I am. Since hacking this in the theme, I haven’t sent a message to the wrong channel. Also, if anyone says my nick at all, the whole line is yellow, versus just my nick getting highlighted. A little more obvious when focusing on 3 windows at once.

{ 4 } Comments
Can you post your hacked version of madcow.theme?
Agreed. Or, maybe more helpfully, if you could point out what you did to allow you to change the background of the active statusbar like that.
I’ve been digging around in the docs and various themes trying to figure out what you did to set the active statusbar to a different color and haven’t come up with anything.
A pointer or two would certainly be appreciated.
why the hell does irssi make it so hard to color the active split window’s statusbar?
i also want to know how you hacked it.
no one seems to have any information anywhere. piece of shit documentation
I figured it out.
It’s the undocumented:
# background for active window
sb_window_bg = “%2%k”;
stupid, huh?
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