5 ms·

When young 13-year old me discovered hypercard, it gave me a feeling of awesomeness, and HyperTalk, the programming language of HyperCard, was a lot of fun. I

When young 13-year old me discovered hypercard, it gave me a feeling of awesomeness, and HyperTalk, the programming language of HyperCard, was a lot of fun. I think that if hypercard had been the engine of the web instead of html/css, we would have had the current state of the web (ie. with client-side dynamic applications) a lot sooner. Wether Hypertalk would have been a better choice than javascript to program the web, this is another story :) For the curious, the Hypertalk entry in wikipedia contains a lot of code examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTalk

tannhaeuser 7y ago
> we would have had the current state of the web (ie. with client-side dynamic applications) a lot sooner But is this a good thing? After all, the web started and succeeded as a simple platform for passive document-browsing rooted in markup (SGML) technologies. There never was a need for a new general-purpose app platform (because that existed, and still exists, in the form of operating systems). Arguably, seeing the web as primarly an app delivery platform is what ruined the web even. As to HyperTalk, it's an odd language for sure (did a HyperCard app for budget control in an agency around 1992), but listening to Bill Atkinson is still very inspiring.
- nl 7y ago
  As someone who had been building web stuff professionally since 1997 and got on it in 1994, I can say we were always trying to make it interactive back then because that's what people wanted. There's a whole stream of forgotten technologies (server push images? Image maps? Html layers?) that show this. Don't believe this rose tinted view of the old web. There was lots wrong with it and the current web stack is much, much better. (Also SGML was never deployed as part of the web)
  - gnufx 7y ago
    It doesn't seems like a rose-tinted view, with a background then in heavily-networked operating systems and hypermedia. Much of what was wrong was due to Mosaic and co. The HTML standards were explicitly SGML applications, and the Amaya browser/editor had a fairly generic SGML engine. (As far as I know, Emacs W3 was the only browser even to implement everything in HTML 1, though.) Then, XML is an SGML application profile.
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      Everybody thought NCP's 8 bit host ids were enough, until TCP/IP happened. Then everybody thought OSI was going to take over and rule the world, until TCP/IP didn't stop happening. And then everybody though IPV6 would quickly take over, until IPV4 refused to die. And everybody thought the world was going to run on SGML, until HTML happened. And then everybody thought SGML might rise from the dead until XML happened. And then everybody thought XML would never just go away and die, until JSON happened. Just goes to show, you never know!
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Check out this mind-blowing thing called "LiveCard" that somebody made by combining HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar (a Mac web server by Chuck Shotton that supported integration with other apps via Apple Events)! It was like implementing interactive graphical CGI scripts with HyperCard, without even programming (but also allowing you to script them in HyperTalk, and publish live HyperCard databases and graphics)! Normal HyperCard stacks would even work without modification. It was far ahead of its time, and inspired me to integrate WebStar with ScriptX to generate static and dynamic HTML web sites and services! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783227 >In fact, one of the earliest tools that enabled anyone, even children, to author and publish their own interactive dynamic web applications with graphics, text, and even forms and persistent databases, was actually based on HyperCard and the MacHTTP/WebStar web server on the Mac: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209 >One of the coolest early applications of server side scripting was integrating HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar, such that you could publish live interactive HyperCard stacks on the web! Since it was based on good old HyperCard, it was one of the first scriptable web authoring tools that normal people and even children could actually use! MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton, and LiveCard HyperCard stack publisher: CGI and AppleScript: http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/184409741 http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1... >Cal discusses the Macintosh as an Internet platform, then describes how you can use the AppleScript language for writing CGI applications that run on Macintosh servers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263 MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton! He was also VP of Engineering at Quarterdeck, another pioneering company. https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/archeo/WebSTAR%20Doc.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astron... http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machttp.html http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machtt... http://tidbits.com/article/6292 http://tidbits.com/article/6292 >It had an AppleScript / OSA API that let you write handlers for responding to web hits in other languages that supported AppleScript. I used it to integrate ScriptX with the web: http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.htm... https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-developers-conference-kaleida-labs-scriptx-demo-64271dd65570 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-develop... The coolest thing somebody did with WebStar was to integrate it with HyperCard so you could actually publish live INTERACTIVE HyperCard stacks on the web, that you could see as images you could click on to follow links, and followed by html form elements corresponding to the text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, drop down menus, scrolling lists, etc in the HyperCard stack that you could use in the browser to interactive with live HyperCard pages! That was the earliest easiest way that non-programmers and even kids could both not just create graphical web pages, but publish live interactive apps on the web! Using HyperCard as a CGI application http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.com/hcfaq/hcfaq4.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.co... http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/184409741 http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1... https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royalsoftware.com/descriptions/comments.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royals... What was it actually ever used for? Saving kid's lives, for one thing: >Livecard has exceeded all expectations and allows me to serve a stack 8 years in the making and previously confined to individual hospitals running Apples. A whole Childrens Hospital and University Department of Child Health should now swing in behind me and this product will become core curriculum for our medical course. Your product will save lives starting early 1997. Well done. - Director, Emergency Medicine, Mater Childrens Hospital
  - somesortofsystm 7y ago
    You're totally spot-on with the 'forgotten technology'. Computer-Academia is a society which goes through cyclic periods of ignorance and dominance over industrial standard processes which produce viable exchange with the mass public, i.e. successful companies. Between the 'cool new shit learned in school' and the 'top secret lab tech', there is a lot of re-invention, invention, refactoring, re-discovery, re-research. Alas, the only good framework is the one in front of the user.
masswerk 7y ago
ViolaWWW (at least in version 3.0) was much like this (mostly thanks to an object-based, entirely scriptable layout engine based on vertically and horizontally spreading, nested panels). An alternative history opportunity for the Web, but probably also a security nightmare. http://www.viola.org/ http://www.viola.org/
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Apple's OpenDoc based browser, CyberDog, was also quite amazing and flexible, because it was completely component based and integrated with OpenDoc. But that plane never got off the ground, because Steve Jobs rightfully focused on saying "No" and "put a bullet in OpenDoc's head". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog >Cyberdog was an OpenDoc-based Internet suite of applications, developed by Apple Computer for the Mac OS line of operating systems. It was introduced as a beta in February 1996 and abandoned in March 1997. The last version, Cyberdog 2.0, was released on April 28, 1997. It worked with later versions of System 7 as well as the Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 operating systems. >Cyberdog derived its name from a cartoon in The New Yorker captioned "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." https://medium.com/@donhopkins/focusing-is-about-saying-no-steve-jobs-wwdc-97-ff0174c171d0 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/focusing-is-about-saying-no-s... >“Focusing is about saying no.” -Steve Jobs, WWDC ‘97. As sad as it was, Steve Jobs was right to “put a bullet in OpenDoc’s head”. As was Sun's original "HotJava" browser, implemented in Java of course, which was less formally component based than OpenDoc (since Java didn't have a comparable user interface component system like OpenDoc at the time, but it was at least very object oriented, modular, and extensible). HotJava served the purpose of opening a lot of people's eyes to the possibilities of Java and the web, but, like CyberDog, it was ahead of its time, and wasn't fully developed into a viable product, and served more as a technology demonstration and source of inspiration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotJava https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotJava >HotJava (later called HotJava Browser to distinguish it from HotJava Views) was a modular, extensible web browser from Sun Microsystems implemented in Java. It was the first browser to support Java applets, and was Sun's demonstration platform for the then-new technology. It has since been discontinued and is no longer supported. Furthermore, the Sun Download Center was taken down on July 31, 2011, and the download link on the official site points to a placeholder page saying so. Unfortunately, neither CyberDog nor HotJava (nor Netscape, until JavaScript finally arrived on the scene) had scripting languages built in, which I believe is an essential ingredient to the success of web browsers and component systems (and text editors like Emacs, and user interface editors like HyperCard or HyperLook or Bongo, or content management systems and blogging tools like Frontier and Radio Userland, etc). Even something as terrible as Microsoft OLE, which evolved from Visual Basic VBXs, was successful because it was built around a scripting language (Visual Basic for VBX, but OLE opened it up to any language via COM/IDispatch/ActiveX/IScriptingEngine/etc).

tannhaeuser 7y ago

> we would have had the current state of the web (ie. with client-side dynamic applications) a lot sooner But is this a good thing? After all, the web started and succeeded as a simple platform for passive document-browsing rooted in markup (SGML) technologies. There never was a need for a new general-purpose app platform (because that existed, and still exists, in the form of operating systems). Arguably, seeing the web as primarly an app delivery platform is what ruined the web even. As to HyperTalk, it's an odd language for sure (did a HyperCard app for budget control in an agency around 1992), but listening to Bill Atkinson is still very inspiring.

nl 7y ago
As someone who had been building web stuff professionally since 1997 and got on it in 1994, I can say we were always trying to make it interactive back then because that's what people wanted. There's a whole stream of forgotten technologies (server push images? Image maps? Html layers?) that show this. Don't believe this rose tinted view of the old web. There was lots wrong with it and the current web stack is much, much better. (Also SGML was never deployed as part of the web)
- gnufx 7y ago
  It doesn't seems like a rose-tinted view, with a background then in heavily-networked operating systems and hypermedia. Much of what was wrong was due to Mosaic and co. The HTML standards were explicitly SGML applications, and the Amaya browser/editor had a fairly generic SGML engine. (As far as I know, Emacs W3 was the only browser even to implement everything in HTML 1, though.) Then, XML is an SGML application profile.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Everybody thought NCP's 8 bit host ids were enough, until TCP/IP happened. Then everybody thought OSI was going to take over and rule the world, until TCP/IP didn't stop happening. And then everybody though IPV6 would quickly take over, until IPV4 refused to die. And everybody thought the world was going to run on SGML, until HTML happened. And then everybody thought SGML might rise from the dead until XML happened. And then everybody thought XML would never just go away and die, until JSON happened. Just goes to show, you never know!
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Check out this mind-blowing thing called "LiveCard" that somebody made by combining HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar (a Mac web server by Chuck Shotton that supported integration with other apps via Apple Events)! It was like implementing interactive graphical CGI scripts with HyperCard, without even programming (but also allowing you to script them in HyperTalk, and publish live HyperCard databases and graphics)! Normal HyperCard stacks would even work without modification. It was far ahead of its time, and inspired me to integrate WebStar with ScriptX to generate static and dynamic HTML web sites and services! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783227 >In fact, one of the earliest tools that enabled anyone, even children, to author and publish their own interactive dynamic web applications with graphics, text, and even forms and persistent databases, was actually based on HyperCard and the MacHTTP/WebStar web server on the Mac: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209 >One of the coolest early applications of server side scripting was integrating HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar, such that you could publish live interactive HyperCard stacks on the web! Since it was based on good old HyperCard, it was one of the first scriptable web authoring tools that normal people and even children could actually use! MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton, and LiveCard HyperCard stack publisher: CGI and AppleScript: http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/184409741 http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1... >Cal discusses the Macintosh as an Internet platform, then describes how you can use the AppleScript language for writing CGI applications that run on Macintosh servers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263 MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton! He was also VP of Engineering at Quarterdeck, another pioneering company. https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/archeo/WebSTAR%20Doc.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astron... http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machttp.html http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machtt... http://tidbits.com/article/6292 http://tidbits.com/article/6292 >It had an AppleScript / OSA API that let you write handlers for responding to web hits in other languages that supported AppleScript. I used it to integrate ScriptX with the web: http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.htm... https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-developers-conference-kaleida-labs-scriptx-demo-64271dd65570 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-develop... The coolest thing somebody did with WebStar was to integrate it with HyperCard so you could actually publish live INTERACTIVE HyperCard stacks on the web, that you could see as images you could click on to follow links, and followed by html form elements corresponding to the text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, drop down menus, scrolling lists, etc in the HyperCard stack that you could use in the browser to interactive with live HyperCard pages! That was the earliest easiest way that non-programmers and even kids could both not just create graphical web pages, but publish live interactive apps on the web! Using HyperCard as a CGI application http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.com/hcfaq/hcfaq4.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.co... http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/184409741 http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1... https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royalsoftware.com/descriptions/comments.html https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royals... What was it actually ever used for? Saving kid's lives, for one thing: >Livecard has exceeded all expectations and allows me to serve a stack 8 years in the making and previously confined to individual hospitals running Apples. A whole Childrens Hospital and University Department of Child Health should now swing in behind me and this product will become core curriculum for our medical course. Your product will save lives starting early 1997. Well done. - Director, Emergency Medicine, Mater Childrens Hospital
- somesortofsystm 7y ago
  You're totally spot-on with the 'forgotten technology'. Computer-Academia is a society which goes through cyclic periods of ignorance and dominance over industrial standard processes which produce viable exchange with the mass public, i.e. successful companies. Between the 'cool new shit learned in school' and the 'top secret lab tech', there is a lot of re-invention, invention, refactoring, re-discovery, re-research. Alas, the only good framework is the one in front of the user.

masswerk 7y ago

ViolaWWW (at least in version 3.0) was much like this (mostly thanks to an object-based, entirely scriptable layout engine based on vertically and horizontally spreading, nested panels). An alternative history opportunity for the Web, but probably also a security nightmare. http://www.viola.org/ http://www.viola.org/

DonHopkins 7y ago
Apple's OpenDoc based browser, CyberDog, was also quite amazing and flexible, because it was completely component based and integrated with OpenDoc. But that plane never got off the ground, because Steve Jobs rightfully focused on saying "No" and "put a bullet in OpenDoc's head". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog >Cyberdog was an OpenDoc-based Internet suite of applications, developed by Apple Computer for the Mac OS line of operating systems. It was introduced as a beta in February 1996 and abandoned in March 1997. The last version, Cyberdog 2.0, was released on April 28, 1997. It worked with later versions of System 7 as well as the Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 operating systems. >Cyberdog derived its name from a cartoon in The New Yorker captioned "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." https://medium.com/@donhopkins/focusing-is-about-saying-no-steve-jobs-wwdc-97-ff0174c171d0 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/focusing-is-about-saying-no-s... >“Focusing is about saying no.” -Steve Jobs, WWDC ‘97. As sad as it was, Steve Jobs was right to “put a bullet in OpenDoc’s head”. As was Sun's original "HotJava" browser, implemented in Java of course, which was less formally component based than OpenDoc (since Java didn't have a comparable user interface component system like OpenDoc at the time, but it was at least very object oriented, modular, and extensible). HotJava served the purpose of opening a lot of people's eyes to the possibilities of Java and the web, but, like CyberDog, it was ahead of its time, and wasn't fully developed into a viable product, and served more as a technology demonstration and source of inspiration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotJava https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotJava >HotJava (later called HotJava Browser to distinguish it from HotJava Views) was a modular, extensible web browser from Sun Microsystems implemented in Java. It was the first browser to support Java applets, and was Sun's demonstration platform for the then-new technology. It has since been discontinued and is no longer supported. Furthermore, the Sun Download Center was taken down on July 31, 2011, and the download link on the official site points to a placeholder page saying so. Unfortunately, neither CyberDog nor HotJava (nor Netscape, until JavaScript finally arrived on the scene) had scripting languages built in, which I believe is an essential ingredient to the success of web browsers and component systems (and text editors like Emacs, and user interface editors like HyperCard or HyperLook or Bongo, or content management systems and blogging tools like Frontier and Radio Userland, etc). Even something as terrible as Microsoft OLE, which evolved from Visual Basic VBXs, was successful because it was built around a scripting language (Visual Basic for VBX, but OLE opened it up to any language via COM/IDispatch/ActiveX/IScriptingEngine/etc).