The existence of the Web is indeed a big reason. While everybody seems to compare Hypercard to things like Visual Basic, and yes, you could use it that way to m

The existence of the Web is indeed a big reason. While everybody seems to compare Hypercard to things like Visual Basic, and yes, you could use it that way to make applications, most people used it to create stacks on a topic (a particular band, or Shakespeare's plays, or Japanese swords) that were basically Web sites before the Web.