8 ms·

HyperCard Simulator

299 points by metadat 2y ago

metadat 2y ago
Heads up: If you click the window-maximize box in the upper right-hand corner it zooms out to the HyperCard Editor! I'm still trying to figure out how to start with a clean slate deck, though. My skills are definitely rusty. I wonder how feasible it'd be to create an entire hypercard based website with this thing.
- mmphosis 2y ago
  The hamburger menu has "New Stack..." You can also Sign in https://hcsimulator.com/mmphosis/Stack https://hcsimulator.com/mmphosis/Stack
  - aydoubleyou 2y ago
    https://hcsimulator.com/havacow/RoundRectsRule https://hcsimulator.com/havacow/RoundRectsRule
    - metadat 2y ago
      Discussed yesterday: Round Rects Are Everywhere https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40781838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40781838 (170 comments)
- plussed_reader 2y ago
  Create new cards, make buttons that link to next card or wherever in the linear stack of cards. Transitions, effects, timing in a gloriously pixelated editor.
  - metadat 2y ago
    You've summed it up. Why can't we have this again?!
    - mmphosis 2y ago
      Either way, expect no HyperCard (or work-alikes) from Apple. But how about other vendors? What about open-source projects? Nothing there, either. Oh, there is no shortage of attempts. And all of them are failures for the same reason: they insist on being more capable, more complexity-laden than HyperCard. And thus, none of them can readily substitute for it. https://www.loper-os.org/?p=568#selection-660.0-660.5 https://www.loper-os.org/?p=568#selection-660.0-660.5
    - basch 2y ago
      PowerPoint? Maybe PowerPoint with embedded excel?
ConanRus 2y ago
I want this: - as an actual app on my Mac - not in retro/bw but with a high res and high colors support Please
- hyperhello 2y ago
  In Sonoma, you can choose Add to Dock in Safari and make a nice little progressive web “app”. Just a cool feature. As for the color, it’s there now. It imports any stack resources from the old AddColor extension, the buttons and fields support both color and bevel level properties in the picker, and you can use any online image as a button icon you want.
- Paul-Craft 2y ago
  LiveCode? https://andregarzia.com/2019/07/livecode-is-a-modern-day-hypercard.html https://andregarzia.com/2019/07/livecode-is-a-modern-day-hyp...
  - digitalsankhara 2y ago
    I used, and liked, the predecessor called Revolution which was closer to the original HyperCard ethos. They are now stuffing so much into LiveCode it feels lost in itself. As a company I find them all over the place with this product.
    - WillAdams 2y ago
      Moreover, they gave up on their opensource Community Edition: https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?t=14667 https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?t=14667
      - digitalsankhara 2y ago
        They did yes, after quite a few funding campaigns targeted at their users. I felt quite bitter about that and I fell for the hype myself.
      - jimbosis 2y ago
wolpoli 2y ago
Here is a question that's been bugging me. What is the modern day tool that achieves the same thing as HyperCard back then? Is it html/javascript?
- metadat 2y ago
  HyperCard is more limited (which acted as a forcing function for creative solutions) and also had an approachability which far surpasses that of HTML/JS. But maybe it's the closest analog.. Even if you stick to only HTML, it's not nearly as fun to make.
- aydoubleyou 2y ago
  Yes. Many people would argue that HyperCard was an offline precursor to the world wide web. Web pages are very similar to HyperCard stacks and the JavaScript 1.0 manual "cites HyperTalk as a major inspiration".
- matthewn 2y ago
  I would say that HTML/Javascript is not a "tool" in the same sense that HyperCard was. HyperCard's real strength was that it allowed mere users (not programmers) to create their own apps (or "stacks", in the HyperCard parlance) through pointing and clicking, plus an English-like scripting language (HyperTalk). We have largely abandoned the idea that users should be able to create their own apps, so there is no popular, modern analogue to HyperCard, though some people keep trying. For instance, LiveCode is a commercial product that is directly inspired by HyperCard. And CardStock is an open source HyperCard clone that swaps out something English-like for Python as the underlying scripting language. https://livecode.com/ https://livecode.com/ https://github.com/benjie-git/CardStock https://github.com/benjie-git/CardStock
- dfabulich 2y ago
  A lot of people have asked this question. There are a bunch of simple GUI-builder tools, including GUI builders for the web, but none of them are popular, due to the sweet spot of supply and demand that Hypercard hit. When Hypercard launched, it came with every Mac, it was free, and there was nothing else like it available on the Mac. On the Mac, the alternative to Hypercard was to layout UI widgets in code, with no GUI builder at all, or eventually to pay $$$ for a professional-grade IDE like CodeWarrior. As an entry-level user with no budget, if you wanted a GUI builder for the Mac, you got Hypercard, or nothing. This created a community of Hypercard enthusiasts. Furthermore, when Hypercard launched, Macs had a standard screen resolution. Every Mac sold had a screen resolution of 512x342 pixels, so you could know for sure how your cards would look on any Mac. Supporting resizable GUIs is one of the hardest things to do in any GUI builder. (How should the buttons layout when the screen gets very small, like a phone? Or very wide, like a 16:9 monitor?) Today, Xcode uses a sophisticated constraint solver / theorem prover to allow developers to build resizable UIs in a GUI; it works pretty well, I think, but it's never going to be as easy to learn as "drag the button onto the screen and it's going to look exactly like that everywhere." The last issue is the real killer for modern Hypercard wannabes: it's a small step from a web GUI builder to raw HTML/CSS. You don't have to pay big bucks to have access to professional-grade HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Sure, they're not that easy to learn, but you can teach a kid to write interactive web pages, no problem. As a result, the demand for a simple GUI builder is lower than it was for Hypercard, and even when you do capture a user, they tend to outgrow your product, and there are a zillion competitors, so none of them can build a community with real traction.
alexambarch 2y ago
As someone who’s too young to have been around for HyperCard, what was the main draw? Was it the accessibility of the tech or was it just really well executed?
- azinman2 2y ago
  This was before the web or even Flash existed. It was a relatively simple multimedia/interactive program authoring tool for non-programmers that had WSYWIG layout. You could build all kinds of things in HyperCard from ways of interacting with databases to stories for school kids.
- roywiggins 2y ago
  I remember being introduced to HyperCard and the idea of linked cards- hypertext, in other words- blew my mind. I imagine it was a lot of other people's introduction to hypertext too, even if they didn't realize it. It was the Adobe Flash of its era.
- pvg 2y ago
  It was very accessible and I think it really made a difference that it appeared on a new computer that was supposed to represent the future of computering (i.e. had a GUI) yet was not meaningfully programmable out of the box, unlike the supposedly obsolete 8-bit computers it was replacing which came with BASIC. HyperCard looked like a thing that could fill that same ecological niche. Edit: A bunch of takes from a few weeks ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294301
- ok123456 2y ago
  Yes. It was a well-done Smalltalk-like language with a RAD component that made making, albeit limited, GUIs about as complicated as using PowerPoint. You could give it to a "smart" kid, and they could, at the very least, make interactive fiction with it with very little instruction. The vast majority of HyperCard stacks could be considered to be non-linear PowerPoint slide decks---cards with buttons that called goto statements that jumped to other cards.
  - 2y ago
BinaryMachine 2y ago
I have some vague memory of this, I think this is what made me want to get into web development/Flash.
jdlyga 2y ago
HyperCard and SuperPaint were my legos as a kid. My dad is a scientist that needed a Macintosh to run calculations, so I was one of the only kids I knew who's family had a computer at the time. I built so many little contraptions using HyperCard. I have a huge fondness for black and white monitor applications and the fun little ways they created patterns using only monochrome.
- LargeWu 2y ago
  Similar. My parents were teachers, and my dad had dominion of the Mac lab, even though he wasn't particularly astute with them. But, since they were idle in the summers, he was able to bring one home. First Apple IIe's, later early Mac's. I spent many, many hours screwing around in HyperCard. We also got our first computer (an Apple II GS, the precursor to Mac. With a full color monitor!) via the "Apple for a Teacher" program where teachers were able to buy them at a significantly discounted price. I had won a creative writing contest for 3-2-1 Contact magazine where the prize was 5 games of my choice, and I was able to convince my parents I needed a computer to play them on during the rest of the year.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
arcboii92 2y ago
Just wasted half an hour at work playing the Get Rich Quick game. I remember the old days of point and click games, not knowing what the next step was, and just aimlessly clicking every item on every screen trying to make something happen
- cmiller1 2y ago
  If you liked Get Rich Quick they made a sequel called Lost & Found that's quite a bit more expansive! You can play it on archive.org here: https://archive.org/details/hypercard_lost-and-found https://archive.org/details/hypercard_lost-and-found
jkhanlar 2y ago
[Using Dark Reader extension darkreader.org] In Death Mall 3000, the inventory text color is almost white on white, can't see unless adding css rule div[id="-6"] > div { color: black; }, but I just realized it was because of DarkReader and disabling that fixes everything
tombert 2y ago
I'm a bit sad that HyperCard was before my time, because if I had known about it as a kid I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done anything else. I've played with it in emulators and it's pretty fun. I love early attempts at making programming accessible to people. To a much lesser extent, I feel like Flash (the animation program, not the player) kind of gave me that feeling the first time I used it. Flash was so immediately approachable compared to trying to figure out something like C++ with OpenGL or SDL or something, and it was just downright fun to create things with it. I've really not found anything since Flash that I've had as much fun developing in. Gamemaker is cool and still pretty fun, but I still don't feel like it's quite as streamlined and it doesn't give me the same "anything is possible" feeling Flash did. Maybe I'm just getting old.
- lionkor 2y ago
  Check out P5js and Processing, maybe those scratch the itch?
  - refset 2y ago
    The joy of Flash was the ease of scripting alongside vector-based illustration with keyframe animations and audio (plus intuitive asset management, onion skinning etc. etc.). Flash was downright fun indeed!
    - tombert 2y ago
      Yeah, P5 and Processing are cool, I like them, but the part of Flash was so magical was that I sort of discovered the coding part. I pirated a copy of Flash so I could draw dumb animations, I would then convert looping animations into movie clips, and then I sort of accidentally figured out that you can attach code to those movie clips, and then I figured out how to make basic games. None of my games were that impressive, but it was ridiculously fun for me. I like P5, I've played with it, but the integration with the animation tool is what really made me love Flash. I miss it.
  - rchaud 2y ago
    While these libraries are great, doing anything with them requires writing code. Hypercard was like PowerPoint, with a point and click GUI.
SCUSKU 2y ago
Wow, I loved Ziggy Gets Out! This feels like a great medium for children's books, and also for a way for kids (and adults) to express themselves in a constrained way. Reminds me a bit of KidPix.
SeanLuke 2y ago
Okay, so you click on the zoom box to go to the "editor". But: if the hypercard player was emulated, why wasn't the editor emulated? Or even an attempt made to be reasonably similar to it? Instead it's replaced with something completely different.
makiaea 2y ago
if you're looking to selfhost a modern alternative you could try tiddlywiki there's an active community and people use it in very different ways
LukasMathis 2y ago
Holy moly, this has a stack in it that I made 30 years ago! Unfortunately, it doesn't work correctly in the simulator.
- cmiller1 2y ago
  Which stack? There are other ways of playing them today if you wanted to mess around for nostalgia-sake and also the creator of HC Simulator is quite responsive to fixing things that might not work quite right :)
  - LukasMathis 2y ago
    The page with my name in the HyperCard 10th Anniversary Stack is a stack I made that was added to that project. It does a bunch of weird things to simulate the Mac Finder, none of which seem to work in the simulator (which makes sense, it's possible that it even uses Apple Script, I don't remember the details). After finding out that this stack still exists, I also found it on archive.org. It works correctly (although slowly) on the Archive.org emulator: https://archive.org/details/hypercard_hc_10th_anniversary https://archive.org/details/hypercard_hc_10th_anniversary
ralmidani 2y ago
Worth noting: Carson Gross built _hyperscript[0], a HyperCard-inspired language that gets interpreted in the browser. Also worth noting: the same Carson Gross built htmx[1]. They are separate projects, but they play together nicely. [0]https://hyperscript.org/ https://hyperscript.org/ [1]https://htmx.org/ https://htmx.org/
Daub 2y ago
You all probably know this, but the way that a cursor changes to an icon of a hand when hovering over a link was directly inspired by HyperCard. In many ways a browser is a development of a Hypercard stack.
- xattt 2y ago
  It’s HyperCards all the way down.
- EricE 2y ago
  I wonder - if Hypercard would have had networking built in would the web still have happened?
- prakash45821 2y ago
  Rummy circle all jokar follow me
gcanyon 2y ago
Many corporate apps at HBO were written in HyperCard. Unfortunately I joined at the very end of that era, around 1996. I built a few things in HyperCard there, but it was clear by then that HyperCard was done.
atribecalledqst 2y ago
I was a kid in the 90s and I have vague memories of various little games and programs on the family Mac (the first one we had was a Mac SE IIRC). When I think about them today, I realize... they were probably HyperCard programs. There was one that was basically an interactive storybook about a black cat, that I forget the name of now but I know is on Macintosh Garden. 99% sure that one is HyperCard. My dad gave me a program called Soroban that was basically just an abacus, I think it gave you simple arithmetic problems and you'd do the calculations on the abacus to figure out the answer. He actually may have written that one himself, I'm not sure. (unfortunately I don't remember how to use an abacus today) Interested to hear about what kinds of obscure HyperCard programs you all encountered back then...
donatj 2y ago
Oh interesting, the relationship web on the Twin Peaks stack is truly awesome. Someone put a whole lot of effort into this and it shows, it's genuinely a great way to present the data. It's weirdly refreshing to see something that so much passion went into. It's got the same energy as the early days of the internet.
martin1b 2y ago
If memory serves, devs were pretty upset when Jobs killed it. Think there is even a video on YT where one dev gives Jobs a mouthful. Using it, I can see why. It was an internet precursor.
iso8859-1 2y ago
How does this compare to Decker ? https://beyondloom.com/decker/index.html https://beyondloom.com/decker/index.html
- presbyterian 2y ago
  I haven't had a chance to sit down with this simulator, but having used both Decker and HyperCard before, Decker has a much steeper learning curve for a beginner.
  - RodgerTheGreat 2y ago
    Would you mind expanding upon that with specifics?
    - AstroJetson 2y ago
      The programming language in Decker is called Lil and it's a cross between APL (how it works on a vector) and a procedural language. Once you get the hang of it, it can be very powerful. But as someone that used APL (and K) and has experience with multiple other language, it was a tough grind. It helps to look at the code behind the tutorial, there are lots of great examples there. The author (who is super responsive to questions) is clear that they liked the look of the dithered black and white from the early Mac era. So it's more of a homage to that than a hypercard. It's fun to play with once you get the basics down. Simple drill and practice is easy to build (ie States and Capitals). I'm sketching out how to do the Ham Radio technician license test practice in it. I'd like to be able to do the math for some of the examples on the screen.
- RodgerTheGreat 2y ago
  HyperCard Simulator is a centralized, web-based service which aims for compatibility with historical HyperCard stacks, including the HyperTalk scripting language. Decker is an open-source standalone application which is similar in some ways to HyperCard, but differs in many details, including the use of a unique scripting language descended from APL. Decker is not designed to be compatible with HyperCard stacks.
vlark 2y ago
Pretty cool! Two of my cheesy old stacks are included in the massive index card and one of my original online friends from the days of eWorld has his stack featured on the second card (the "Are You A Space Alien" stack). I notice that this simulator doesn't load XCMD and XFCN plugins; I distinctly remember using an XFCN to include graphics in pop-up windows and my stacks running in the emulator don't trigger that functionality. It doesn't affect the main stack functions but no one will ever find the easter eggs in my stacks without them.
prakash45821 2y ago
Rummy circle all jokar follow me

299 points by metadat 2y ago

Heads up: If you click the window-maximize box in the upper right-hand corner it zooms out to the HyperCard Editor! I'm still trying to figure out how to start with a clean slate deck, though. My skills are definitely rusty. I wonder how feasible it'd be to create an entire hypercard based website with this thing.

mmphosis 2y ago
The hamburger menu has "New Stack..." You can also Sign in https://hcsimulator.com/mmphosis/Stack https://hcsimulator.com/mmphosis/Stack
- aydoubleyou 2y ago
  https://hcsimulator.com/havacow/RoundRectsRule https://hcsimulator.com/havacow/RoundRectsRule
  - metadat 2y ago
    Discussed yesterday: Round Rects Are Everywhere https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40781838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40781838 (170 comments)
plussed_reader 2y ago
Create new cards, make buttons that link to next card or wherever in the linear stack of cards. Transitions, effects, timing in a gloriously pixelated editor.
- metadat 2y ago
  You've summed it up. Why can't we have this again?!
  - mmphosis 2y ago
    Either way, expect no HyperCard (or work-alikes) from Apple. But how about other vendors? What about open-source projects? Nothing there, either. Oh, there is no shortage of attempts. And all of them are failures for the same reason: they insist on being more capable, more complexity-laden than HyperCard. And thus, none of them can readily substitute for it. https://www.loper-os.org/?p=568#selection-660.0-660.5 https://www.loper-os.org/?p=568#selection-660.0-660.5
  - basch 2y ago
    PowerPoint? Maybe PowerPoint with embedded excel?

ConanRus 2y ago

I want this: - as an actual app on my Mac - not in retro/bw but with a high res and high colors support Please

hyperhello 2y ago
In Sonoma, you can choose Add to Dock in Safari and make a nice little progressive web “app”. Just a cool feature. As for the color, it’s there now. It imports any stack resources from the old AddColor extension, the buttons and fields support both color and bevel level properties in the picker, and you can use any online image as a button icon you want.
Paul-Craft 2y ago
LiveCode? https://andregarzia.com/2019/07/livecode-is-a-modern-day-hypercard.html https://andregarzia.com/2019/07/livecode-is-a-modern-day-hyp...
- digitalsankhara 2y ago
  I used, and liked, the predecessor called Revolution which was closer to the original HyperCard ethos. They are now stuffing so much into LiveCode it feels lost in itself. As a company I find them all over the place with this product.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    Moreover, they gave up on their opensource Community Edition: https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?t=14667 https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?t=14667
    - digitalsankhara 2y ago
      They did yes, after quite a few funding campaigns targeted at their users. I felt quite bitter about that and I fell for the hype myself.
    - jimbosis 2y ago

wolpoli 2y ago

Here is a question that's been bugging me. What is the modern day tool that achieves the same thing as HyperCard back then? Is it html/javascript?

metadat 2y ago
HyperCard is more limited (which acted as a forcing function for creative solutions) and also had an approachability which far surpasses that of HTML/JS. But maybe it's the closest analog.. Even if you stick to only HTML, it's not nearly as fun to make.
aydoubleyou 2y ago
Yes. Many people would argue that HyperCard was an offline precursor to the world wide web. Web pages are very similar to HyperCard stacks and the JavaScript 1.0 manual "cites HyperTalk as a major inspiration".
matthewn 2y ago
I would say that HTML/Javascript is not a "tool" in the same sense that HyperCard was. HyperCard's real strength was that it allowed mere users (not programmers) to create their own apps (or "stacks", in the HyperCard parlance) through pointing and clicking, plus an English-like scripting language (HyperTalk). We have largely abandoned the idea that users should be able to create their own apps, so there is no popular, modern analogue to HyperCard, though some people keep trying. For instance, LiveCode is a commercial product that is directly inspired by HyperCard. And CardStock is an open source HyperCard clone that swaps out something English-like for Python as the underlying scripting language. https://livecode.com/ https://livecode.com/ https://github.com/benjie-git/CardStock https://github.com/benjie-git/CardStock
dfabulich 2y ago
A lot of people have asked this question. There are a bunch of simple GUI-builder tools, including GUI builders for the web, but none of them are popular, due to the sweet spot of supply and demand that Hypercard hit. When Hypercard launched, it came with every Mac, it was free, and there was nothing else like it available on the Mac. On the Mac, the alternative to Hypercard was to layout UI widgets in code, with no GUI builder at all, or eventually to pay $$$ for a professional-grade IDE like CodeWarrior. As an entry-level user with no budget, if you wanted a GUI builder for the Mac, you got Hypercard, or nothing. This created a community of Hypercard enthusiasts. Furthermore, when Hypercard launched, Macs had a standard screen resolution. Every Mac sold had a screen resolution of 512x342 pixels, so you could know for sure how your cards would look on any Mac. Supporting resizable GUIs is one of the hardest things to do in any GUI builder. (How should the buttons layout when the screen gets very small, like a phone? Or very wide, like a 16:9 monitor?) Today, Xcode uses a sophisticated constraint solver / theorem prover to allow developers to build resizable UIs in a GUI; it works pretty well, I think, but it's never going to be as easy to learn as "drag the button onto the screen and it's going to look exactly like that everywhere." The last issue is the real killer for modern Hypercard wannabes: it's a small step from a web GUI builder to raw HTML/CSS. You don't have to pay big bucks to have access to professional-grade HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Sure, they're not that easy to learn, but you can teach a kid to write interactive web pages, no problem. As a result, the demand for a simple GUI builder is lower than it was for Hypercard, and even when you do capture a user, they tend to outgrow your product, and there are a zillion competitors, so none of them can build a community with real traction.

alexambarch 2y ago

As someone who’s too young to have been around for HyperCard, what was the main draw? Was it the accessibility of the tech or was it just really well executed?

azinman2 2y ago
This was before the web or even Flash existed. It was a relatively simple multimedia/interactive program authoring tool for non-programmers that had WSYWIG layout. You could build all kinds of things in HyperCard from ways of interacting with databases to stories for school kids.
roywiggins 2y ago
I remember being introduced to HyperCard and the idea of linked cards- hypertext, in other words- blew my mind. I imagine it was a lot of other people's introduction to hypertext too, even if they didn't realize it. It was the Adobe Flash of its era.
pvg 2y ago
It was very accessible and I think it really made a difference that it appeared on a new computer that was supposed to represent the future of computering (i.e. had a GUI) yet was not meaningfully programmable out of the box, unlike the supposedly obsolete 8-bit computers it was replacing which came with BASIC. HyperCard looked like a thing that could fill that same ecological niche. Edit: A bunch of takes from a few weeks ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294301
ok123456 2y ago
Yes. It was a well-done Smalltalk-like language with a RAD component that made making, albeit limited, GUIs about as complicated as using PowerPoint. You could give it to a "smart" kid, and they could, at the very least, make interactive fiction with it with very little instruction. The vast majority of HyperCard stacks could be considered to be non-linear PowerPoint slide decks---cards with buttons that called goto statements that jumped to other cards.
- 2y ago

BinaryMachine 2y ago

I have some vague memory of this, I think this is what made me want to get into web development/Flash.

jdlyga 2y ago

HyperCard and SuperPaint were my legos as a kid. My dad is a scientist that needed a Macintosh to run calculations, so I was one of the only kids I knew who's family had a computer at the time. I built so many little contraptions using HyperCard. I have a huge fondness for black and white monitor applications and the fun little ways they created patterns using only monochrome.

LargeWu 2y ago
Similar. My parents were teachers, and my dad had dominion of the Mac lab, even though he wasn't particularly astute with them. But, since they were idle in the summers, he was able to bring one home. First Apple IIe's, later early Mac's. I spent many, many hours screwing around in HyperCard. We also got our first computer (an Apple II GS, the precursor to Mac. With a full color monitor!) via the "Apple for a Teacher" program where teachers were able to buy them at a significantly discounted price. I had won a creative writing contest for 3-2-1 Contact magazine where the prize was 5 games of my choice, and I was able to convince my parents I needed a computer to play them on during the rest of the year.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

arcboii92 2y ago

Just wasted half an hour at work playing the Get Rich Quick game. I remember the old days of point and click games, not knowing what the next step was, and just aimlessly clicking every item on every screen trying to make something happen

cmiller1 2y ago
If you liked Get Rich Quick they made a sequel called Lost & Found that's quite a bit more expansive! You can play it on archive.org here: https://archive.org/details/hypercard_lost-and-found https://archive.org/details/hypercard_lost-and-found

jkhanlar 2y ago

[Using Dark Reader extension darkreader.org] In Death Mall 3000, the inventory text color is almost white on white, can't see unless adding css rule div[id="-6"] > div { color: black; }, but I just realized it was because of DarkReader and disabling that fixes everything

tombert 2y ago

I'm a bit sad that HyperCard was before my time, because if I had known about it as a kid I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done anything else. I've played with it in emulators and it's pretty fun. I love early attempts at making programming accessible to people. To a much lesser extent, I feel like Flash (the animation program, not the player) kind of gave me that feeling the first time I used it. Flash was so immediately approachable compared to trying to figure out something like C++ with OpenGL or SDL or something, and it was just downright fun to create things with it. I've really not found anything since Flash that I've had as much fun developing in. Gamemaker is cool and still pretty fun, but I still don't feel like it's quite as streamlined and it doesn't give me the same "anything is possible" feeling Flash did. Maybe I'm just getting old.

lionkor 2y ago
Check out P5js and Processing, maybe those scratch the itch?
- refset 2y ago
  The joy of Flash was the ease of scripting alongside vector-based illustration with keyframe animations and audio (plus intuitive asset management, onion skinning etc. etc.). Flash was downright fun indeed!
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah, P5 and Processing are cool, I like them, but the part of Flash was so magical was that I sort of discovered the coding part. I pirated a copy of Flash so I could draw dumb animations, I would then convert looping animations into movie clips, and then I sort of accidentally figured out that you can attach code to those movie clips, and then I figured out how to make basic games. None of my games were that impressive, but it was ridiculously fun for me. I like P5, I've played with it, but the integration with the animation tool is what really made me love Flash. I miss it.
- rchaud 2y ago
  While these libraries are great, doing anything with them requires writing code. Hypercard was like PowerPoint, with a point and click GUI.

SCUSKU 2y ago

Wow, I loved Ziggy Gets Out! This feels like a great medium for children's books, and also for a way for kids (and adults) to express themselves in a constrained way. Reminds me a bit of KidPix.

SeanLuke 2y ago

Okay, so you click on the zoom box to go to the "editor". But: if the hypercard player was emulated, why wasn't the editor emulated? Or even an attempt made to be reasonably similar to it? Instead it's replaced with something completely different.

makiaea 2y ago

if you're looking to selfhost a modern alternative you could try tiddlywiki there's an active community and people use it in very different ways

LukasMathis 2y ago

Holy moly, this has a stack in it that I made 30 years ago! Unfortunately, it doesn't work correctly in the simulator.

cmiller1 2y ago
Which stack? There are other ways of playing them today if you wanted to mess around for nostalgia-sake and also the creator of HC Simulator is quite responsive to fixing things that might not work quite right :)
- LukasMathis 2y ago
  The page with my name in the HyperCard 10th Anniversary Stack is a stack I made that was added to that project. It does a bunch of weird things to simulate the Mac Finder, none of which seem to work in the simulator (which makes sense, it's possible that it even uses Apple Script, I don't remember the details). After finding out that this stack still exists, I also found it on archive.org. It works correctly (although slowly) on the Archive.org emulator: https://archive.org/details/hypercard_hc_10th_anniversary https://archive.org/details/hypercard_hc_10th_anniversary

ralmidani 2y ago

Worth noting: Carson Gross built _hyperscript[0], a HyperCard-inspired language that gets interpreted in the browser. Also worth noting: the same Carson Gross built htmx[1]. They are separate projects, but they play together nicely. [0]https://hyperscript.org/ https://hyperscript.org/ [1]https://htmx.org/ https://htmx.org/

Daub 2y ago

You all probably know this, but the way that a cursor changes to an icon of a hand when hovering over a link was directly inspired by HyperCard. In many ways a browser is a development of a Hypercard stack.

xattt 2y ago
It’s HyperCards all the way down.
EricE 2y ago
I wonder - if Hypercard would have had networking built in would the web still have happened?
prakash45821 2y ago
Rummy circle all jokar follow me

gcanyon 2y ago

Many corporate apps at HBO were written in HyperCard. Unfortunately I joined at the very end of that era, around 1996. I built a few things in HyperCard there, but it was clear by then that HyperCard was done.

atribecalledqst 2y ago

I was a kid in the 90s and I have vague memories of various little games and programs on the family Mac (the first one we had was a Mac SE IIRC). When I think about them today, I realize... they were probably HyperCard programs. There was one that was basically an interactive storybook about a black cat, that I forget the name of now but I know is on Macintosh Garden. 99% sure that one is HyperCard. My dad gave me a program called Soroban that was basically just an abacus, I think it gave you simple arithmetic problems and you'd do the calculations on the abacus to figure out the answer. He actually may have written that one himself, I'm not sure. (unfortunately I don't remember how to use an abacus today) Interested to hear about what kinds of obscure HyperCard programs you all encountered back then...

donatj 2y ago

Oh interesting, the relationship web on the Twin Peaks stack is truly awesome. Someone put a whole lot of effort into this and it shows, it's genuinely a great way to present the data. It's weirdly refreshing to see something that so much passion went into. It's got the same energy as the early days of the internet.

martin1b 2y ago

If memory serves, devs were pretty upset when Jobs killed it. Think there is even a video on YT where one dev gives Jobs a mouthful. Using it, I can see why. It was an internet precursor.

iso8859-1 2y ago

How does this compare to Decker ? https://beyondloom.com/decker/index.html https://beyondloom.com/decker/index.html

presbyterian 2y ago
I haven't had a chance to sit down with this simulator, but having used both Decker and HyperCard before, Decker has a much steeper learning curve for a beginner.
- RodgerTheGreat 2y ago
  Would you mind expanding upon that with specifics?
  - AstroJetson 2y ago
    The programming language in Decker is called Lil and it's a cross between APL (how it works on a vector) and a procedural language. Once you get the hang of it, it can be very powerful. But as someone that used APL (and K) and has experience with multiple other language, it was a tough grind. It helps to look at the code behind the tutorial, there are lots of great examples there. The author (who is super responsive to questions) is clear that they liked the look of the dithered black and white from the early Mac era. So it's more of a homage to that than a hypercard. It's fun to play with once you get the basics down. Simple drill and practice is easy to build (ie States and Capitals). I'm sketching out how to do the Ham Radio technician license test practice in it. I'd like to be able to do the math for some of the examples on the screen.
RodgerTheGreat 2y ago
HyperCard Simulator is a centralized, web-based service which aims for compatibility with historical HyperCard stacks, including the HyperTalk scripting language. Decker is an open-source standalone application which is similar in some ways to HyperCard, but differs in many details, including the use of a unique scripting language descended from APL. Decker is not designed to be compatible with HyperCard stacks.

vlark 2y ago

Pretty cool! Two of my cheesy old stacks are included in the massive index card and one of my original online friends from the days of eWorld has his stack featured on the second card (the "Are You A Space Alien" stack). I notice that this simulator doesn't load XCMD and XFCN plugins; I distinctly remember using an XFCN to include graphics in pop-up windows and my stacks running in the emulator don't trigger that functionality. It doesn't affect the main stack functions but no one will ever find the easter eggs in my stacks without them.

prakash45821 2y ago

Rummy circle all jokar follow me