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Hypercard – Way Too Early

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Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#41

Post by blt »

mbell wrote: post #12
jacobolus wrote: post #2

I think this blog post is overly caught up on the word “card” – HyperCard “cards” weren’t particularly like the cards inside android or twitter or facebook. Indeed, if HyperCard cards were like anything, it’s web pages, except designed for the limitations of the hardware of the time and targeting only one hardware platform (standard display, etc.) and running on a single non-networked computer. Also, why “way too ear…

As an example of how far from the 'card' metaphor you could go using Hypercard: Myst was built in it.

How did they port it to Windows?

Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#42

Post by blt »

Like several other commenters, Hypercard was my first programming-like experience. I don't think I made anything more complex than a series of pages linked together with buttons. It was a great learning tool, easier than HTML where you still have to worry about embedded images and it's difficult to vertically center something.

Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#43

Post by dahjelle »

freehunter wrote: post #40
dahjelle wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has their been a successor to VB? The web is close in some respects (HTML is easy) and not in others (servers and single-page apps are not). I suppose, in another respect, Excel is a successor for many, though it isn't a good solution for making apps of any sort. Surprisingly, the closest I've seen has been Microsoft's Project Siena[1]. I've not used it extensively, but my 5 or 10 minute made it look like it had the…

As a non-programmer, I've been looking for a VB successor for a long time.

Not sure if either of these are useful to you, but there are some interesting projects in LiveCode[1] and in Alpha Anywhere[2]. I've not used either.

I'm hoping Mozilla's AppMaker[3] comes to something, but I haven't been able to actually make it work yet.

I can't say that I find any of these really (yet) hitting the sweet spot that HyperCard did, but that may be my own ignorance. :-D

[1] http://livecode.com/

[2] http://alphasoftware.com/

[3] https://appmaker.mozillalabs.com/

Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#44

Post by protomyth »

I think the important difference between Hypercard and the web is the all-in-one approach to Hypercard. You ship a stack and it works. Single environment and not a huge number of different technologies.

I don't think VB killed Hypercard. Apple never got color, networking, etc. working and put no effort into it. Hypercard would have died with or without VB.

Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#45

Post by doctorwho »

This is becoming a common (but idiotic) meme... "Anything that had die hard fans, that didn't succeed - Way Too Early"

Maybe it was just bad technology or a bad implementation.

If it was really that good (it wasn't) then it would have survived. The fact that nothing of any consequence works this way today is telling.

You could only go so far with HyperCard before running into limitations and that's deadly.

It was easy for beginners but offered no advantage to experts. Once you graduated beyond HyperCard you could never go back.

Market death.

Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#46

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

freehunter wrote: post #40
dahjelle wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has their been a successor to VB? The web is close in some respects (HTML is easy) and not in others (servers and single-page apps are not). I suppose, in another respect, Excel is a successor for many, though it isn't a good solution for making apps of any sort. Surprisingly, the closest I've seen has been Microsoft's Project Siena[1]. I've not used it extensively, but my 5 or 10 minute made it look like it had the…

As a non-programmer, I've been looking for a VB successor for a long time.

I wouldn't call it a VB replacement but have a look at processing.org

Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#47

Post by doctorwho »

flomo wrote: post #19
kabdib wrote: post #3

If HyperCard had had a good network API, things would have been a lot different. The thing that steamrollered HyperCard was Visual BASIC, which could talk to all kinds of system services, and once it had COM support, could talk to just about anything on the planet. Also, everyone understood BASIC, and HyperTalk, though interesting and easy to use, was very closed and pretty much a toy. Apple's networking APIs weren't…

> The thing that steamrollered HyperCard was Visual BASIC True from a market standpoint, I recall one of the Mac magazines had an article about jerry-rigging a database front-end in HyperCard, and it was clear it was no VB. However, more similar in spirit to HyperCard was Lotus Notes, with its networked hypertext document databases where data storage was largely abstracted away. That was a proprietary web before ther…

Lotus Notes was an awful way to do anything. It allowed people with little to no programming skill to destroy the IT capabilities of small business and non-profits. If that had been backed by anyone except Lotus it would have died on the drawing board (as it should have).

Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#48

Post by AlphaGeekZulu »

grkvlt wrote: post #34
AlphaGeekZulu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The card in HyperCard was not an app, but rather served multiple purposes: First, it was a container for widgets, or, in other words, a canvas for the user interface. If the user interface would not fit in the fixed size screen of the card (it was 640x480px in the beginning and became resizable later on), it could be organized into multiple cards, each containing parts of the ui and with some navigation ui elements t…

> it was 640x480px in the beginning Less than that. Must have been 512x342; as I remember using it on 9" Mac Plus and Classic BW screens?

You are right! To quote the HyperTalk 2.0 reference by Dan Winkler and Scot Kamins: "Locations 0,0 through 511,341 are within a standard card's area and are therefore visible on all Macintosh displays. Points outside those boundaries might or might not be visible, depending upon the size of the display you're using." Page 872 defines the Standard card pixel size as 512 horizontal, 342 vertical. HyperCard 2.0 allowed already to make custom sizes for stacks and my screen at that time was 640x480.

Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#49

Post by cadr »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #14

Watching this demo of what Hypercard could do in 1987, it seems like there are a lot of things that would be great if they were translated into a modern context right now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMFscTOazS0

Which things? Does http://runrev.com/ do them? (I believe it is suppose to be a modern Hypercard.)

Re: Hypercard – Way Too Early

#50

Post by kabdib »

flomo wrote: post #19
kabdib wrote: post #3

If HyperCard had had a good network API, things would have been a lot different. The thing that steamrollered HyperCard was Visual BASIC, which could talk to all kinds of system services, and once it had COM support, could talk to just about anything on the planet. Also, everyone understood BASIC, and HyperTalk, though interesting and easy to use, was very closed and pretty much a toy. Apple's networking APIs weren't…

> The thing that steamrollered HyperCard was Visual BASIC True from a market standpoint, I recall one of the Mac magazines had an article about jerry-rigging a database front-end in HyperCard, and it was clear it was no VB. However, more similar in spirit to HyperCard was Lotus Notes, with its networked hypertext document databases where data storage was largely abstracted away. That was a proprietary web before ther…

Every time I had to use Notes, I died a little inside.

Fortunately the company I was working for that used it had other "bad environment" issues (e.g., running awful antivirus software on dev machines, resulting in a 4X slowdown of compiles), and I ragequit to do coffee shops and bookstores for a summer.

Notes: both a symptom and a disease :-)

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