Decker seems like it would have a lot of potential for e-ink devices like the boox note series and such.
Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
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Re: Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
#52Is there a place these days for interfaces like this? I’m thinking about self contained applications like HyperCard stacks, but also FileMaker databases or even Access databases where we had interfaces linked to a database all as a self contained application. These tools with scripting languages powered a ton of small business applications. I know a lab I worked with was still using FileMaker databases up until a few…
Why past tense, Filemaker and Access are still being sold. A solution would probably be Airtable.
FileMaker is no longer affordable. A single seat is around $500.
Re: Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
#53The HyperCard legacy lives on! The self-contained single-file HTML export alone makes this a fantastic medium for web zines and indie games, and the dithered aesthetic gives it immediate charm. Looking forward to diving into Lil.
And it seems kinda perfect for e-ink
Re: Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
#54The HyperCard legacy lives on! The self-contained single-file HTML export alone makes this a fantastic medium for web zines and indie games, and the dithered aesthetic gives it immediate charm. Looking forward to diving into Lil.
It looks way better than most modern interfaces on e-ink too!
Re: Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
#55If I could point to two major influences that directed me towards computer engineering it was Hypercard and BBS's.
Re: Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
#56Nitpicking:
“classic Mac OS”
not
“classic macOS”
Re: Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
i believe they used a modified version of hypercard for myst. their earlier games, like _cosmic osmo_, used vanilla hypercard.
In a sense, yes. They used third-party extensions (XCMDs) to HyperCard to add features it didn’t support out of the box, such as full-color support.
And in the final releases of HyperCard, Apple even bundled a third-party color XCMD in order to pretend that HyperCard supported color. It was really limited though (insert PICT files from disk! change the color of buttons! use the paint tools in color? what are those?)
Re: Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
#58I miss HyperCard and I love projects like this at a nostalgia level - but if you're going to have aspirations that this is useful today (2026) with a real project then its a complete waste of time. I want HyperCard where I can build out a stack or whatever and actually present it to people as a real and tangible thing. I love living in the past as much as anyone else, but this is a little disappointing.
A lot of these modern HyperCard reinterpretations get stuck on the black-and-white aesthetics of the original. That's cool, but it limits how broadly appealing they become. Even back when HyperCard was relevant, Apple's inability to properly introduce color as a first-class feature was what effectively killed the product. A few years ago, I think there would have been a market for a HyperCard-inspired tool that targe…
> Even back when HyperCard was relevant, Apple's inability to properly introduce color as a first-class feature was what effectively killed the product
They never hacked color into HyperCard 2 since their plans for HyperCard 3 were too grand - it was going to be a part of QuickTime, so that HyperCard stacks would be multimedia applications delivered as QuickTime movies, including embedding on the web. This was when Apple was spiraling though and it got cut.
Re: Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
#59I'm afraid that HyperCard is too old for broader audience to be able to grasp how extraordinary experience it was providing. As a 6-7yo I had a collection of English words, stored with my own definitions and pronunciations, using basic building blocks, and it was as easy and intuitive as writing these words in my notebook. People used the same building primitives to make real games or stuff like accounting applicatio…
It took browsers and web dev until, IDK, maybe 2010? to match the interactivity and capability of Hypercard circa 1994. The actual killer app turned out to be the network itself, but for anyone who used and built things with Hypercard (a lot of people), all the patterns of components and event-driven development were like an echo from a refined past by the time it became part of the modern development toolkit.
But nothing like the ease of development since FrontPage until Web Forms and they weren’t as good.
Re: Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a scripting language for this? That was what really differentiated HyperCard and made it a replacement for the never-released MacBasic: https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html
Appears so: https://beyondloom.com/decker/lil.html
I was asking if tldraw had a scripting option.
Which answer after searching is yes and no: