6 ms·

Show HN: A small Hypercard stack running as a PWA

109 points by hyperhello 4y ago

In my early programming years, I went from BASIC to HyperCard, then learned C when I couldn't make HyperCard do everything I wanted. Plenty of folks have pointed out how the lack of native support for color doomed HyperCard. But I think it was really over when the web got started and replaced everything in the "personal content" space from underneath, so I decided to see if the idea of HyperCard would work as a web app. There are some missing pieces -- it's not perfectly compatible. You can, however, make stacks online and let others see them. Free, no ads, no personal information, you are not tracked, just a fun project.

lolive 4y ago
My father had a Mac at home, for work. I used it for games. But i was much too young/inexperienced to really understand or enjoy Hypercard. Nowadays I use and love Obsidian for personal knowledge management. I wonder the philosophical gap between both tools.
recursivedoubts 4y ago
absolutely awesome i am an old hypercard programmer, and i have a passion project I work on: https://hyperscript.org https://hyperscript.org which is a scripting language for the web, based on HyperTalk
- samhw 4y ago
  I just wanted to say: I'm super anal by nature and I was fully expecting to have some criticism to make of your site or your language, but this is one of the most high-quality, well-thought-out projects I've seen. The sheer thoroughness of it is extraordinary. I especially love that you've written a proper reference for the language. Chapeau to you. This is better than some Google research projects I've seen. I'd be really interested in the underlying theory, or any insights you had when writing this. I'm not quite old enough to really be familiar with Hypercard, so I may be missing something. (I did spot a couple of minor typesetting mistakes, of course, haha. You've got 'anymore' ['any more'] on the '/comparison' page, and 'propogate' ['propagate'] in the reference.)
  - recursivedoubts 4y ago
    thank you, that's very nice of you to say :) i wanted a companion scripting language for https://htmx.org https://htmx.org and i always loved HyperTalk, i figured something like that would be a good fit for the web w/ its event-oriented syntax. Beyond that, not much theory except that I wanted it to "look right" and I didn't want to have to deal w/ async when scripting: https://hyperscript.org/docs/#async https://hyperscript.org/docs/#async but I don't want to take the discussion too far away from OP, which is an amazing project!
    - ksec 4y ago
      It would have been great if htmx and hypersrcipt were the default option on the web. Especially htmx.
      - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        What isn't compatible with HTMX...?
- sriku 4y ago
  This is really awesome! (Echoing other comments on this) and well documented too. Besides being useful for light frontend work, it also seems like a great tool to introduce kids to.
kwatsonafter 4y ago
Great work. I love HyperCard. I'm too young to really have properly played around with it but I think the idealism is superb. There really needs to to be more popular software inspired by acid trips.
watersb 4y ago
Wow. Just last night, I had a dream where I had taken my family along to a conference of AppleScript and HyperTalk developers. Family enjoyed the hotel and the glorious metropolis of San Jose. A dozen or so programmers thought about ways to take AppleScript to the next level. (We could call it... AppleJava for Apps!)
HanClinto 4y ago
Absolutely love Hypercard, and love what you did with this. Nicely done!!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jamal-kumar 4y ago
Hypercard's creation story is always a fun read [1]. Personally I only ever used it when I was a little kid to make animations with my friends, for that it was pretty sweet too, I wonder if kids these days have it as good for that kind of thing? [1] https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hypercard/ https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hyp...
jacquesm 4y ago
Hah! Well done, really. Nice to see this, will it allow old stacks to be revived somehow?
- hyperhello 4y ago
  Yes, if you have a genuine HyperCard stack file in one of various formats, then it will read it in and display whatever it can.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Very neat! It's funny to see this 'old' screen suddenly on my huge modern monitor. It feels like timetravel :)
macintux 4y ago
Here's an ancient HyperCard deck/marketing material my mother collected at some point. https://ibb.co/album/y4t3vT https://ibb.co/album/y4t3vT
- twoWhlsGud 4y ago
  Fun to see that again - thanks for posting. Chris Espinosa used to joke that the slogan for the product should be "HyperCard - You figure it out." ; )
  - macintux 4y ago
    Definitely not the easiest product for an elevator pitch.
robgibbons 4y ago
I like to point to HyperCard anytime someone says the Web was only meant to display static documents. Or NLS. Or any of the other hypermedia progenitors!

109 points by hyperhello 4y ago

lolive 4y ago

My father had a Mac at home, for work. I used it for games. But i was much too young/inexperienced to really understand or enjoy Hypercard. Nowadays I use and love Obsidian for personal knowledge management. I wonder the philosophical gap between both tools.

recursivedoubts 4y ago

absolutely awesome i am an old hypercard programmer, and i have a passion project I work on: https://hyperscript.org https://hyperscript.org which is a scripting language for the web, based on HyperTalk

samhw 4y ago
I just wanted to say: I'm super anal by nature and I was fully expecting to have some criticism to make of your site or your language, but this is one of the most high-quality, well-thought-out projects I've seen. The sheer thoroughness of it is extraordinary. I especially love that you've written a proper reference for the language. Chapeau to you. This is better than some Google research projects I've seen. I'd be really interested in the underlying theory, or any insights you had when writing this. I'm not quite old enough to really be familiar with Hypercard, so I may be missing something. (I did spot a couple of minor typesetting mistakes, of course, haha. You've got 'anymore' ['any more'] on the '/comparison' page, and 'propogate' ['propagate'] in the reference.)
- recursivedoubts 4y ago
  thank you, that's very nice of you to say :) i wanted a companion scripting language for https://htmx.org https://htmx.org and i always loved HyperTalk, i figured something like that would be a good fit for the web w/ its event-oriented syntax. Beyond that, not much theory except that I wanted it to "look right" and I didn't want to have to deal w/ async when scripting: https://hyperscript.org/docs/#async https://hyperscript.org/docs/#async but I don't want to take the discussion too far away from OP, which is an amazing project!
  - ksec 4y ago
    It would have been great if htmx and hypersrcipt were the default option on the web. Especially htmx.
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      What isn't compatible with HTMX...?
sriku 4y ago
This is really awesome! (Echoing other comments on this) and well documented too. Besides being useful for light frontend work, it also seems like a great tool to introduce kids to.

kwatsonafter 4y ago

Great work. I love HyperCard. I'm too young to really have properly played around with it but I think the idealism is superb. There really needs to to be more popular software inspired by acid trips.

watersb 4y ago

Wow. Just last night, I had a dream where I had taken my family along to a conference of AppleScript and HyperTalk developers. Family enjoyed the hotel and the glorious metropolis of San Jose. A dozen or so programmers thought about ways to take AppleScript to the next level. (We could call it... AppleJava for Apps!)

HanClinto 4y ago

Absolutely love Hypercard, and love what you did with this. Nicely done!!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jamal-kumar 4y ago

Hypercard's creation story is always a fun read [1]. Personally I only ever used it when I was a little kid to make animations with my friends, for that it was pretty sweet too, I wonder if kids these days have it as good for that kind of thing? [1] https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hypercard/ https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hyp...

jacquesm 4y ago

Hah! Well done, really. Nice to see this, will it allow old stacks to be revived somehow?

hyperhello 4y ago
Yes, if you have a genuine HyperCard stack file in one of various formats, then it will read it in and display whatever it can.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Very neat! It's funny to see this 'old' screen suddenly on my huge modern monitor. It feels like timetravel :)

macintux 4y ago

Here's an ancient HyperCard deck/marketing material my mother collected at some point. https://ibb.co/album/y4t3vT https://ibb.co/album/y4t3vT

twoWhlsGud 4y ago
Fun to see that again - thanks for posting. Chris Espinosa used to joke that the slogan for the product should be "HyperCard - You figure it out." ; )
- macintux 4y ago
  Definitely not the easiest product for an elevator pitch.

robgibbons 4y ago

I like to point to HyperCard anytime someone says the Web was only meant to display static documents. Or NLS. Or any of the other hypermedia progenitors!