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ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

vipercard.net

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Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#21

Post by peterburkimsher »

I taught myself AppleScript when I was 13, to parse HTML and make 1000-character iPod Notes. I'd used LogoWriter in school since I was 7, but never got a copy of HyperCard. I heard many good things about HyperCard, but never thought it would be worth starting an emulator just to use it.

I just opened ViperCard, and the GUI is totally intuitive. The scripts used by buttons share a lot of syntax with AppleScript. This is the GUI for AppleScript I always wanted. Now I know why people love it. If I'd been able to use HyperCard earlier, maybe I'd have become a front-end developer instead of a back-end engineer.

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#22

Post by klenwell »

mikekchar wrote: post #20

If I remember correctly, the only reason Ward Cunningham invented the wiki is because HyperCard was discontinued. He was apparently writing CRC cards and storing them in HyperCard (which seems like a completely reasonable thing to do...) He wanted something that was as convenient for doing that kind of thing.

That's interesting. I find the wiki concept truly transformative. One of the first things I've done with almost every job I've had is set up an internal MediaWiki wiki. It's always been worth the effort even if I was the only one who bothered to contribute it for the most part.

Playing with this, I was trying to figure out a practical application for it. Is it fair to say it has largely been obsoleted by things like wikis?

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#23

Post by ashleyn »

HyperCard together with Qbasic both fell into that forgotten realm of democratising programming; making it so that even your aunt could write a simple program herself. A lot of people ended up learning programming because of these simple languages/tools, and I used to love playing with their projects I'd download from Geocities and the like.

It's a bit of a shame the industry gave up on the idea, and abandoned these syntactically-sugared programming languages. HyperTalk reads just like English; it very much seemed like the next generation of the niche BASIC aimed to fill. Because computers of that era typically opened right into a development environment (e.g. a simple BASIC interpreter), there was even brief discussion of HyperCard potentially replacing Finder as the default Mac OS environment.

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#24

Post by scroot »

Karunamon wrote: post #3
zitterbewegung wrote: post #2

I wonder how much material design is influenced by Hypercard. I know the web was partially inspired but it looks like with material design the language is sort of extended. Or maybe it was all integrated into the design language for the web.

What I find amazing is that early B&W GUIs were more usable than modern material design. Most takes on Material that I’ve seen take poor use of screen real-estate, poor conveyance, and distracting/hard-to-read color choices to an art form.

Once we get usable and affordable e-ink monitors designers will have to revisit this territory seriously.

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#25

Post by ken »

Torwald wrote: post #11
zitterbewegung wrote: post #2

I wonder how much material design is influenced by Hypercard. I know the web was partially inspired but it looks like with material design the language is sort of extended. Or maybe it was all integrated into the design language for the web.

I had an equivalent multimedia authoring system on the Amiga, called Hyperbook. http://obligement.free.fr/articles/hyperbook_beta.php It was very much influenced by HyperCard, obviously. They didn't try to hide it, to the contrary, so much so that they hacked the UI-controls to make them more "Macintoshis" I guess. Except it came in colors. The multimedia aspect of the Amiga, remember?

HyperCard on the Apple IIgs fully supported colors. :-)

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#26

Post by walterbell »

dangoor wrote: post #16

This is cool, but I wonder if anyone has made a modern, browser-based variation of HyperCard? Something with a model akin to HyperCard's but exporting stacks in a form that can be easily put onto a page. There's Amber Smalltalk, but that's more powerful and the simplicity of HyperCard is part of its charm.

Not modern, but the original in a browser via emulation: https://blog.archive.org/2017/08/11/hypercard-on-the-archive...

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#28

Post by haraldooo »

dangoor wrote: post #16

This is cool, but I wonder if anyone has made a modern, browser-based variation of HyperCard? Something with a model akin to HyperCard's but exporting stacks in a form that can be easily put onto a page. There's Amber Smalltalk, but that's more powerful and the simplicity of HyperCard is part of its charm.

Not browser based but a „modern implementation“: https://livecode.com/ - the website is a little „marketingy“ but you can download a open source version of their „hypercard succesor“

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#29

Post by zitterbewegung »

Karunamon wrote: post #3
zitterbewegung wrote: post #2

I wonder how much material design is influenced by Hypercard. I know the web was partially inspired but it looks like with material design the language is sort of extended. Or maybe it was all integrated into the design language for the web.

What I find amazing is that early B&W GUIs were more usable than modern material design. Most takes on Material that I’ve seen take poor use of screen real-estate, poor conveyance, and distracting/hard-to-read color choices to an art form.

I have done material design somewhat badly. I would mean a design directly from Google not someone’s reinterpretation of it. You can use it to justify your sloppyness but you could do the same thing in HyperCard.

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#30

Post by jacquesm »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #21

I taught myself AppleScript when I was 13, to parse HTML and make 1000-character iPod Notes. I'd used LogoWriter in school since I was 7, but never got a copy of HyperCard. I heard many good things about HyperCard, but never thought it would be worth starting an emulator just to use it. I just opened ViperCard, and the GUI is totally intuitive. The scripts used by buttons share a lot of syntax with AppleScript. This…

> If I'd been able to use HyperCard earlier, maybe I'd have become a front-end developer instead of a back-end engineer.

Lucky you.

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