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

vipercard.net

31–40 of 144 posts

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

#31
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...

I'm still kind of awestruck by this. Hosting an OS inside a browser. It's great as a time capsule to perfectly see the past. But because it's an emulator, it would be difficult to add a more modern feature, like ViperCard's share-url-to-stack and save-stack-as-json.

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

#32
post #27

www.livecode.com is a cross platform updated Hypercard descendant. Their free Community edition is GPL

I liked Runtime Revolution. I wish the broader coding community would taken environments like this more seriously, is the text editor sacred? I left the platform before they added more mobile+online support, I'll have to see what they have added recently.

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

#33

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.

In his own words: Ward Cunningham, Inventor of the Wiki WikimediaFoundation https://youtube.com/watch?v=XqxwwuUdsp4 at about 3:00 and on for a minute. There was a release of hypercard in ‘98 - four years after he was working on the wiki.

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

#34
post #23

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…

Isn't https://scratch.mit.edu/ a modern incarnation of this style?

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

#35
post #23

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…

I'd be interested to know what circumstances made the concept flourish. Massively popular yet difficult-to-program devices sitting in every home?

If I could go back in time I would have stuck with QBasic for at least another five years before moving to C. I wasn't close to ready for the briefly exciting dive into "real" coding, which led to abstract CS concepts, the thick books with exciting illustrations on the covers, the CS classes which were so boring. Meanwhile I believe I could have actually been shipping software had I stuck with QB. Gar to admit but true.

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

#37

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…

AppleScript, for those who don't know, was heavily inspired by HyperCard. And apparently was one of the (many) core language inspirations behind Javascript too.

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

#38
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.

At the risk of courting controversy, arguably that's what Flash was: ActionScript, for example, being based on HyperTalk. Certainly it included many of the concepts originally found in HyperCard. Of course, that too has been superseded, and ironically - after many years of holding Flash in some degree of contempt - I have to admit to being rather saddened by the fact.

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

#39
post #34
post #23

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…

Isn't https://scratch.mit.edu/ a modern incarnation of this style?

Scratch is nothing like HyperCard.
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