HyperCard
Encyclopedia
HyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson
for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia
systems before the World Wide Web
. It combines database
capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk
, written by Dan Winkler, a programming language
for manipulating data and the user interface. Some HyperCard users employed it as a programming system for Rapid Application Development
of applications and databases.
HyperCard was originally released in 1987 for $49.95, and was included with all new Macs sold at the time. It was withdrawn from sale in March 2004, although by then it had not been updated for many years.
. The layout engine was similar in concept to a "form" as used in most Rapid Application Development (RAD) environments (such as Borland Delphi
or Visual Basic
). A special "Home" stack (precursor to the home page on a website) was available as an application launcher, a repository for shared scripts, and a facility for setting preferences.
HyperCard is not only a database system. The layout of each card could be unique, just as one can write additional non-standard information on a Rolodex card. A special background layer contained elements that appeared on all cards of that stack or on all cards grouped under a certain background. Backgrounds could include pictures (its original purpose, "background picture"), in addition to the objects also available for each card: fields; buttons; (static) text; (editable) text fields; and other common GUI
elements. Each card then could contain different data in the text or picture fields, as in a database.
For instance, an address book could be built by adding to the background a few text fields to hold the name and address. Once completed, the user adds a new card (by typing Command-N or under software control) and types into the fields. The background could be modified at any time, allowing changes to be made easily. Basic operations such as search, add, and delete were built-in, allowing simple databases to be set up and used by anyone able to use the Macintosh
computer.
The Rolodex paradigm does not preclude the creation of standard looking applications. Arbitrary functionality could be programmed into a single card, making it resemble a traditional single-screen application. Additional cards could be linked similarly to the way that additional screens are linked in ordinary programs. Full control of the menu bar and support of virtually all native objects and controls allowed the creation of professional looking software. Hypercard saved the working stack to disk automatically after most standard operations, such as editing a text field or navigating to another card. This feature is disk intensive (there is in fact no native "save" command at all, except to make a copy of the current stack).
HyperCard's
HyperCard integrates a software development environment with a run-time environment in a simple, easily accessible way. The tools required to write an application, principally the creation and configuration of screen objects like buttons, fields and menus, are part and parcel with the ability to add programmed functionality to those objects. When designing and programming an application one may contemplate both structure and capability within a single well defined arena. That one could personally design and implement a custom application uniquely suited to one's own needs revolutionized the very concept of what software was. Instead of trying to force a particular task onto an Excel spreadsheet, for example, a custom solution may be authored, modified and updated as needed, in a very short time, without functional compromise and with a personalized interface. "Empowerment" became a catchword as this possibility was embraced by the Macintosh community, as was the phrase "programming for the rest of us", that is, anyone, not just professional programmers.
. Objects exist in a message path hierarchy and respond to messages generated by either the user or the system itself. Objects inherit properties and attributes from those above them in the hierarchy. HyperTalk object classes are predetermined by the HyperCard environment, although others can be added by the use of externals (see below). HyperTalk is verbose, hence its ease of use and readability. HyperTalk code segments are referred to as "scripts", a term that was considered less daunting to beginning programmers.
Each HyperCard object class, contains a number of "properties". For example, buttons are a type of object, and come in standard styles. To determine, say, whether a checkbox style button is in fact checked, a script can simply call the "checkmark" property, which would return either true or false. In a similar way, objects can be analyzed via functions. For example, the number of lines in text field (another type of object) can be determined by a variant of the "number" function, called simply as "the number of lines of field 'fieldName'". This is very useful when performing a particular action on each separate line of the field. The script that implements the action need only call the function to know exactly the number of lines it must deal with. Should the field data change, the already coded function call will still be accurate.
HyperTalk is a weakly typed
language. All variables, and in fact all values of any kind, are stored as typeless character strings handled by the interpreter as numbers or text based purely on context. This has a cost in speed but makes it far easier to write (and to read) code. Variables need not be declared, but rather are created on the fly as they are required. For example, the following expression creates a variable named “total”, and sets its initial value: "put 15 into total". Then the expression "add 3 to total" would result in the string "18" being stored in that variable. Taking this further, a powerful and intuitive structure known as "chunking" allows precise manipulation of text and number strings. It is possible, for example, to have the second character of the value "123" (the 2) added to the last character of the value "12345", yielding "12347". For another example, word 3 of "life is cruel" (cruel) can be appended after the first word of "Hello world", yielding "Hello cruel world". It would then be possible to put "Goodbye" into (thus replacing) the first word of that string, yielding "Goodbye cruel world". The above mentioned terms: "character", "word", "first", "last", "after", and "into", among many others, offer exquisite control over the ability to crunch numbers and parse text, down to the character level.
HyperTalk supports most standard programming structures such as "if-then" and "repeat". The "if-then" structure is so flexible that it even allows "case" structured code.
HyperTalk scripting allows the system to be easily modified and extended. Unlike many procedural languages, and even many scripting languages, HyperTalk proved to be far more accessible to a wide range of users, partly because scripts were more or less readable as English
. For instance,
Adding scripts is also easy. The user simply "command-option-clicked" (or he could click the "Script" button in the item's property dialog) on any element in the stack, and an editor would pop up. The script may then be edited, saved, and used immediately. In addition, HyperCard contains a "Message Box", an interactive command-line in a floating window that can execute single lines of script. This also includes the "find" command, so it doubles as a search dialog. HyperCard 2.0 added a debugger
, as well.
HyperTalk was sufficiently popular that one of its main uses was not as a database, but as a programming tool that empowered ordinary computer users. Thousands of "stacks" were written and distributed as "stackware" in the years when HyperCard was widely available. As stated above, programming "for the rest of us", that is, for non-professionals, allowed many thousands of personal applications to be created by individuals with a need for personal software solutions. Some are still in use today.
Many hardware and software vendors provided their tutorials as HyperCard stacks, since the application was bundled with all Macs.
that integrated into either the system generally or the HyperTalk language specifically; this was an early example of the plug-in concept. Unlike conventional plug-ins, these did not require separate installation before they were available for use; they could be included in a stack, where they were directly available to scripts in that stack.
During HyperCard's peak popularity in the late 1980s, a whole ecosystem of vendors offered thousands of these externals for everything from HyperTalk compilers to graphing systems, database access, internet connectivity, and animation. Oracle offered an XCMD that allowed HyperCard to directly query Oracle databases on any platform. This was later superseded by Oracle's Oracle Card product. BeeHive Technologies offered a hardware interface that allowed the computer to control external devices. Connected via the ADB bus, this instrument could "read" the state of connected external switches or "write" digital outputs to a multitude of devices.
Externals allow access to the Macintosh Toolbox, which contained many lower level commands and functions not native to HyperTalk, such as control of the serial and ADB
ports.
, HyperCard was often used as a general-purpose presentation program. Examples of HyperCard applications include simple databases, "choose your own adventure
"—type games, and educational teaching aids.
Due to its rapid application design facilities, HyperCard was also sometimes used for prototyping of applications and sometimes even for version 1.0 implementations. Inside Apple, the QuickTime team was one of HyperCard's biggest customers.
A number of commercial software products were created in HyperCard, most notably the original version of the interactive game narrative Myst
, the Voyager Company
's Expanded Books
, and multimedia CD-ROMs of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony CD-ROM
, the Beatles
' A Hard Day's Night
, and the Voyager MacBeth
.
The prototype and demo of the popular game You Don't Know Jack was written in HyperCard. Renault
, the French auto manufacturer, used it to control their inventory system.
In Quebec, Canada, Hypercard was used to control a robot arm used to insert and retrieve video disks at the National Film Board CinéRobothèque.
HyperCard was also used to prototype a fully functional prototype of SIDOCI (one of the very first experiments in the world to develop an integrated electronic patient record system) and was heavily used by Montréal Consulting firm DMR to demonstrate how "a typical day in the life of a patient about to get surgery" would look like in a paperless age.
Activision
, which was until that time primarily a game company, saw HyperCard as an entry point into the business market. Changing their name to Mediagenic, they published several major HyperCard based applications, most notably Danny Goodman
's Focal Point, a personal information manager, and Reports For HyperCard, a program by Nine To Five Software that allowed users to treat HyperCard as a full-fledged database system with robust information viewing and printing features.
The HyperCard-inspired SuperCard for a while included the "Roadster" plug-in that allowed stacks to be placed inside Web
pages and viewed by browsers with an appropriate browser plug-in. There was even a Windows version of this plug-in allowing computers other than Macintoshes to use the plug-in.
. Work for it began in March 1985 under the name of WildCard (hence the creator code
of 'WILD'). In 1986 Dan Winkler began work on HyperTalk
and the name was changed to HyperCard for trademark
reasons. It was initially released in August 1987, with the understanding that Atkinson would give HyperCard to Apple only if they promised to release it for free on all Macs. Apple timed its release to coincide with the MacWorld Conference & Expo
in Boston
, Massachusetts
to guarantee maximum publicity. HyperCard was a huge hit almost instantly. Many people who thought they would never be able to program a computer started using HyperCard for all sorts of automation and prototyping tasks, a surprise even to its creator.
Apple itself never seemed to understand what HyperCard's target market for users should be. Project managers found it was being used by a huge number of people, internally and externally. Bug reports and upgrade suggestions continued to flow in, demonstrating it had a wide variety of users. Since it was also free, it was difficult to justify dedicating engineering resources to improvements in the software. It was not lost on Apple or its mainstream developers that the power HyperCard gave to people could cut into the sales of ordinary shrink wrapped products.
that greatly increased performance of computationally intensive code, a new debugger
and a number of improvements to the underlying HyperTalk language.
At the same time HyperCard 2.0 was being developed, a separate group within Apple developed and in 1991 released "HyperCard IIGS", a version of HyperCard for the Apple IIGS
system. Aimed mainly at the education market, HyperCard IIGS had roughly the same feature set as the 1.x versions of Macintosh HyperCard, while adding support for the color graphics capabilities of the IIGS. Although "stacks" (HyperCard program documents) were not binary-compatible, a translator program (itself a HyperCard stack) allowed stacks to be moved from one platform to the other.
Then, Apple decided that most of its application software packages, including HyperCard, would be the property of a wholly owned subsidiary called Claris
. Many of the HyperCard developers chose to stay at Apple rather than move to Claris, causing the development team to be split. Claris, in the business of selling software for a profit, attempted to create a business model where HyperCard could also generate revenues. They wrote a new "viewer only" version, the HyperCard Player which Apple distributed with the Macintosh operating system, while Claris sold the "full" version commercially. Many users were upset that they had to pay to use software that had traditionally been supplied free and which many considered a basic part of the Mac.
Despite the new revenue stream, Claris did little to market HyperCard. Development continued with minor upgrades, as well as the first failed attempt to create a third generation of HyperCard. During this period, HyperCard began losing market share. Without a number of important, basic features, HyperCard authors began moving to systems such as SuperCard
and Macromedia Authorware
. Nevertheless HyperCard continued to be popular and used for a widening range of applications, from the game The Manhole
, an earlier effort by the creators of Myst
, to corporate information services and many thousands in between.
Apple eventually folded Claris back into the parent company, returning HyperCard to Apple's core engineering group. In 1992, Apple released the eagerly anticipated upgrade of HyperCard 2.2 and made many HyperCard enthusiasts happy by including licensed versions of Color Tools and Addmotion II, adding support for color pictures and animations. However, these tools were limited and often cumbersome to use because HyperCard still lacked true, internal color support.
group. A new effort to allow HyperCard to create QuickTime interactive (QTi) movies started, once again under the direction of Kevin Calhoun. QTi extended QuickTime's core multimedia playback features to provide true interactive facilities and a low-level programming language based on 68000 assembly language.
The resulting HyperCard 3.0 was first presented in 1996 when an alpha-quality version was shown to developers at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference
. Under the leadership of Dan Crow development continued through the late 1990s, with public demos showing many popular features such as color support, internet connectivity, and the ability to play HyperCard stacks (which were now special QuickTime movies) in a web browser
. Development of HyperCard 3.0 stalled when the QuickTime team was focused away from development of QuickTime interactive to the streaming features of QuickTime 4.0. Finally in 2000 the HyperCard engineering team was reassigned to other tasks after Steve Jobs
decided to abandon the product. Calhoun and Crow both left Apple shortly after in 2001.
In the years that followed, the program saw no additional support from Apple. Apple finally ceased selling HyperCard in March 2004.
HyperCard runs natively only in Mac OS
versions 9 or earlier, but it can still be used in Mac OS X
's Classic
mode on PowerPC based machines (G5 and earlier). The last functional native HyperCard authoring environment is Classic mode in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) on PowerPC based machines (although it can be run on modern Intel-based machines by using an emulation layer such as SheepShaver
).
Because HyperCard executed scripts in stacks immediately on opening, it was also one of the first applications susceptible to macro viruses
. The Merryxmas virus was discovered in early 1993 by Ken Dunham, two years before the "Concept" virus. There were very few viruses based on HyperCard, and their overall impact was minimal.
concept to a large popular base of users. However, it was preceded by Paul Heckel's
Zoomracks
.
Jakob Nielsen
has pointed out that HyperCard was really only a hypermedia
program since its links started from regions on a card, not text objects; actual HTML
-style text hyperlink
s were possible in later versions, but were awkward to implement and seldom used. Bill Atkinson later lamented that if he had only realized the power of network-oriented stacks, instead of focusing on local stacks on a single machine, HyperCard could have become the first Web browser.
HyperCard saw a loss in popularity with the growth of the World Wide Web, since the Web could handle and deliver data in much the same way as HyperCard without being limited to files on one's own hard disk. HyperCard had a significant impact on the web as it inspired the creation of both HTTP itself (through its influence on Tim Berners-Lee
's colleague Robert Cailliau
), and JavaScript
(whose creator, Brendan Eich
, was inspired by HyperTalk
). It was also a key inspiration for ViolaWWW
, an early web browser.
The pointing-finger cursor
used for navigating stacks later found its way into the first web browsers, as the hyperlink cursor.
The Myst
computer game franchise, initially released as a HyperCard stack and included bundled with some Macs (for example the Performa 5300), still lives on, making HyperCard a facilitating technology for starting one of the best-selling computer games of all time.
According to Ward Cunningham
, the inventor of Wiki
s, the wiki concept can be traced back to a HyperCard stack he wrote in the late 1980s, making HyperCard one of the grandparents of the Wiki idea.
Past products included:
In addition, many of the basic concepts of the original system were later re-used in other forms. Apple built their system-wide scripting engine AppleScript
on a language similar to HyperTalk; it is often used for DTP
workflow automation needs. In the 1990s FaceSpan provided a third-party graphical interface, and continues to do so today. AppleScript also has a native graphical programming front-end called Automator, released with Mac OS X
10.4, codenamed Tiger, in April 2005. One of HyperCard's strengths was its handling of multimedia
, and many multimedia systems like Macromedia Authorware
and Macromedia Director are based on concepts originating in HyperCard .
AppWare
, originally known as Serius Developer, is sometimes seen to be similar to HyperCard, as they were both rapid application development
systems. AppWare was sold in the early 90s and worked on both Windows and Mac systems.
Bill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia
Hypermedia
Hypermedia is a computer-based information retrieval system that enables a user to gain or provide access to texts, audio and video recordings, photographs and computer graphics related to a particular subject.Hypermedia is a term created by Ted Nelson....
systems before the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. It combines database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk
HyperTalk
HyperTalk is a high-level, procedural programming language created in 1987 by Dan Winkler and used in conjunction with Apple Computer's HyperCard hypermedia program by Bill Atkinson. The main target audience of HyperTalk was beginning programmers, hence HyperTalk programmers were usually called...
, written by Dan Winkler, a programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
for manipulating data and the user interface. Some HyperCard users employed it as a programming system for Rapid Application Development
Rapid application development
Rapid application development is a software development methodology that uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping. The "planning" of software developed using RAD is interleaved with writing the software itself...
of applications and databases.
HyperCard was originally released in 1987 for $49.95, and was included with all new Macs sold at the time. It was withdrawn from sale in March 2004, although by then it had not been updated for many years.
Design
HyperCard is based on the concept of a "stack" of virtual "cards". Cards hold data, just as they would in a rolodexRolodex
A Rolodex is a rotating file device used to store business contact information currently manufactured by Newell Rubbermaid. The Rolodex holds specially shaped index cards; the user writes the contact information for one person or company on each card...
. The layout engine was similar in concept to a "form" as used in most Rapid Application Development (RAD) environments (such as Borland Delphi
Borland Delphi
Embarcadero Delphi is an integrated development environment for console, desktop graphical, web, and mobile applications.Delphi's compilers use its own Object Pascal dialect of Pascal and generate native code for 32- and 64-bit Windows operating systems, as well as 32-bit Mac OS X and iOS...
or Visual Basic
Visual Basic
Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...
). A special "Home" stack (precursor to the home page on a website) was available as an application launcher, a repository for shared scripts, and a facility for setting preferences.
HyperCard is not only a database system. The layout of each card could be unique, just as one can write additional non-standard information on a Rolodex card. A special background layer contained elements that appeared on all cards of that stack or on all cards grouped under a certain background. Backgrounds could include pictures (its original purpose, "background picture"), in addition to the objects also available for each card: fields; buttons; (static) text; (editable) text fields; and other common GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
elements. Each card then could contain different data in the text or picture fields, as in a database.
For instance, an address book could be built by adding to the background a few text fields to hold the name and address. Once completed, the user adds a new card (by typing Command-N or under software control) and types into the fields. The background could be modified at any time, allowing changes to be made easily. Basic operations such as search, add, and delete were built-in, allowing simple databases to be set up and used by anyone able to use the Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computer.
The Rolodex paradigm does not preclude the creation of standard looking applications. Arbitrary functionality could be programmed into a single card, making it resemble a traditional single-screen application. Additional cards could be linked similarly to the way that additional screens are linked in ordinary programs. Full control of the menu bar and support of virtually all native objects and controls allowed the creation of professional looking software. Hypercard saved the working stack to disk automatically after most standard operations, such as editing a text field or navigating to another card. This feature is disk intensive (there is in fact no native "save" command at all, except to make a copy of the current stack).
HyperCard's
find command could quickly navigate to cards containing text using a hintBits algorithm. This could be made more selective with modifications such as find "Bob" in card field "hello". Similarly, it had a "sort" command that allowed evaluating entire expressions to determine sorting order.HyperCard integrates a software development environment with a run-time environment in a simple, easily accessible way. The tools required to write an application, principally the creation and configuration of screen objects like buttons, fields and menus, are part and parcel with the ability to add programmed functionality to those objects. When designing and programming an application one may contemplate both structure and capability within a single well defined arena. That one could personally design and implement a custom application uniquely suited to one's own needs revolutionized the very concept of what software was. Instead of trying to force a particular task onto an Excel spreadsheet, for example, a custom solution may be authored, modified and updated as needed, in a very short time, without functional compromise and with a personalized interface. "Empowerment" became a catchword as this possibility was embraced by the Macintosh community, as was the phrase "programming for the rest of us", that is, anyone, not just professional programmers.
HyperTalk
The programming language within HyperCard is called HyperTalk and is object orientedObject-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...
. Objects exist in a message path hierarchy and respond to messages generated by either the user or the system itself. Objects inherit properties and attributes from those above them in the hierarchy. HyperTalk object classes are predetermined by the HyperCard environment, although others can be added by the use of externals (see below). HyperTalk is verbose, hence its ease of use and readability. HyperTalk code segments are referred to as "scripts", a term that was considered less daunting to beginning programmers.
Each HyperCard object class, contains a number of "properties". For example, buttons are a type of object, and come in standard styles. To determine, say, whether a checkbox style button is in fact checked, a script can simply call the "checkmark" property, which would return either true or false. In a similar way, objects can be analyzed via functions. For example, the number of lines in text field (another type of object) can be determined by a variant of the "number" function, called simply as "the number of lines of field 'fieldName'". This is very useful when performing a particular action on each separate line of the field. The script that implements the action need only call the function to know exactly the number of lines it must deal with. Should the field data change, the already coded function call will still be accurate.
HyperTalk is a weakly typed
Weak typing
In computer science, weak typing is a property attributed to the type systems of some programming languages. It is the opposite of strong typing, and consequently the term weak typing has as many different meanings as strong typing does.One of the more common definitions states that weakly typed...
language. All variables, and in fact all values of any kind, are stored as typeless character strings handled by the interpreter as numbers or text based purely on context. This has a cost in speed but makes it far easier to write (and to read) code. Variables need not be declared, but rather are created on the fly as they are required. For example, the following expression creates a variable named “total”, and sets its initial value: "put 15 into total". Then the expression "add 3 to total" would result in the string "18" being stored in that variable. Taking this further, a powerful and intuitive structure known as "chunking" allows precise manipulation of text and number strings. It is possible, for example, to have the second character of the value "123" (the 2) added to the last character of the value "12345", yielding "12347". For another example, word 3 of "life is cruel" (cruel) can be appended after the first word of "Hello world", yielding "Hello cruel world". It would then be possible to put "Goodbye" into (thus replacing) the first word of that string, yielding "Goodbye cruel world". The above mentioned terms: "character", "word", "first", "last", "after", and "into", among many others, offer exquisite control over the ability to crunch numbers and parse text, down to the character level.
HyperTalk supports most standard programming structures such as "if-then" and "repeat". The "if-then" structure is so flexible that it even allows "case" structured code.
HyperTalk scripting allows the system to be easily modified and extended. Unlike many procedural languages, and even many scripting languages, HyperTalk proved to be far more accessible to a wide range of users, partly because scripts were more or less readable as English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. For instance,
put the first word of the third line of field "hello" into field "goodbye" did exactly that. Referring to objects and the items on cards or backgrounds was easy. The example above shows how to access data within a field on a particular card, but one could refer to any object in the same fashion — including the stack itself. All objects could be named or renamed, as in the example above. In addition, each object (including the stack itself) had unique numeric IDs that remained unchanged throughout the life of the object.Adding scripts is also easy. The user simply "command-option-clicked" (or he could click the "Script" button in the item's property dialog) on any element in the stack, and an editor would pop up. The script may then be edited, saved, and used immediately. In addition, HyperCard contains a "Message Box", an interactive command-line in a floating window that can execute single lines of script. This also includes the "find" command, so it doubles as a search dialog. HyperCard 2.0 added a debugger
Debugger
A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs . The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an instruction set simulator , a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered but which...
, as well.
HyperTalk was sufficiently popular that one of its main uses was not as a database, but as a programming tool that empowered ordinary computer users. Thousands of "stacks" were written and distributed as "stackware" in the years when HyperCard was widely available. As stated above, programming "for the rest of us", that is, for non-professionals, allowed many thousands of personal applications to be created by individuals with a need for personal software solutions. Some are still in use today.
Many hardware and software vendors provided their tutorials as HyperCard stacks, since the application was bundled with all Macs.
Externals
The power of HyperCard could be increased significantly through the use of external command and external function modules, more commonly known as XCMDs and XFCNs. These were code libraries packaged in a resource forkResource fork
The resource fork is a construct of the Mac OS operating system used to store structured data in a file, alongside unstructured data stored within the data fork. A resource fork stores information in a specific form, such as icons, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and...
that integrated into either the system generally or the HyperTalk language specifically; this was an early example of the plug-in concept. Unlike conventional plug-ins, these did not require separate installation before they were available for use; they could be included in a stack, where they were directly available to scripts in that stack.
During HyperCard's peak popularity in the late 1980s, a whole ecosystem of vendors offered thousands of these externals for everything from HyperTalk compilers to graphing systems, database access, internet connectivity, and animation. Oracle offered an XCMD that allowed HyperCard to directly query Oracle databases on any platform. This was later superseded by Oracle's Oracle Card product. BeeHive Technologies offered a hardware interface that allowed the computer to control external devices. Connected via the ADB bus, this instrument could "read" the state of connected external switches or "write" digital outputs to a multitude of devices.
Externals allow access to the Macintosh Toolbox, which contained many lower level commands and functions not native to HyperTalk, such as control of the serial and ADB
Apple Desktop Bus
Apple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999....
ports.
Applications
HyperCard has been used for all sorts of hypertext and artistic purposes. Before the advent of PowerPointMicrosoft PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a non-free commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X operating system...
, HyperCard was often used as a general-purpose presentation program. Examples of HyperCard applications include simple databases, "choose your own adventure
Choose Your Own Adventure
Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's gamebooks where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome. The series was based on a...
"—type games, and educational teaching aids.
Due to its rapid application design facilities, HyperCard was also sometimes used for prototyping of applications and sometimes even for version 1.0 implementations. Inside Apple, the QuickTime team was one of HyperCard's biggest customers.
A number of commercial software products were created in HyperCard, most notably the original version of the interactive game narrative Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
, the Voyager Company
Voyager Company
The Voyager Company was a pioneer in CD-ROM production in the 1980s and early 1990s, and published The Criterion Collection, a pioneering home video collection of classic and important contemporary films on Laserdisc. It was founded in 1984 by four partners: Jon Turell, Bill Becker, Aleen Stein and...
's Expanded Books
Expanded Books
The Expanded Books Project was an undertaking at The Voyager Company during 1991, that investigated ideas on how a book could be presented on a computer screen in a way that would be both familiar and useful to regular book readers...
, and multimedia CD-ROMs of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony CD-ROM
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony CD-ROM
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony CD-ROM was one of the first titles to couple a computer with an audio CD. This title was developed in 1989 by The Voyager Company in Apple Computer's HyperCard, using custom audio XCMDs developed at Voyager...
, the Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' A Hard Day's Night
A Hard Day's Night (film)
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...
, and the Voyager MacBeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
.
The prototype and demo of the popular game You Don't Know Jack was written in HyperCard. Renault
Renault
Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...
, the French auto manufacturer, used it to control their inventory system.
In Quebec, Canada, Hypercard was used to control a robot arm used to insert and retrieve video disks at the National Film Board CinéRobothèque.
HyperCard was also used to prototype a fully functional prototype of SIDOCI (one of the very first experiments in the world to develop an integrated electronic patient record system) and was heavily used by Montréal Consulting firm DMR to demonstrate how "a typical day in the life of a patient about to get surgery" would look like in a paperless age.
Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
, which was until that time primarily a game company, saw HyperCard as an entry point into the business market. Changing their name to Mediagenic, they published several major HyperCard based applications, most notably Danny Goodman
Danny Goodman
Danny Goodman is a computer programmer, technology consultant, and a well-known, award-winning author of over three dozen books and hundreds of magazine articles on computer-related topics...
's Focal Point, a personal information manager, and Reports For HyperCard, a program by Nine To Five Software that allowed users to treat HyperCard as a full-fledged database system with robust information viewing and printing features.
The HyperCard-inspired SuperCard for a while included the "Roadster" plug-in that allowed stacks to be placed inside Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
pages and viewed by browsers with an appropriate browser plug-in. There was even a Windows version of this plug-in allowing computers other than Macintoshes to use the plug-in.
History
HyperCard was created by Bill AtkinsonBill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
. Work for it began in March 1985 under the name of WildCard (hence the creator code
Creator code
A creator code is a mechanism introduced in pre-Mac OS X versions of the Macintosh operating system to link a data file to the application program which created it, in a manner similar to file extensions in other operating systems. Codes are four-byte OSTypes. For example, the creator code of the...
of 'WILD'). In 1986 Dan Winkler began work on HyperTalk
HyperTalk
HyperTalk is a high-level, procedural programming language created in 1987 by Dan Winkler and used in conjunction with Apple Computer's HyperCard hypermedia program by Bill Atkinson. The main target audience of HyperTalk was beginning programmers, hence HyperTalk programmers were usually called...
and the name was changed to HyperCard for trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
reasons. It was initially released in August 1987, with the understanding that Atkinson would give HyperCard to Apple only if they promised to release it for free on all Macs. Apple timed its release to coincide with the MacWorld Conference & Expo
Macworld Conference & Expo
Produced by Boston-based IDG World Expo, Macworld | iWorld is a trade-show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It is held annually in the United States, usually during the second week of January...
in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
to guarantee maximum publicity. HyperCard was a huge hit almost instantly. Many people who thought they would never be able to program a computer started using HyperCard for all sorts of automation and prototyping tasks, a surprise even to its creator.
Apple itself never seemed to understand what HyperCard's target market for users should be. Project managers found it was being used by a huge number of people, internally and externally. Bug reports and upgrade suggestions continued to flow in, demonstrating it had a wide variety of users. Since it was also free, it was difficult to justify dedicating engineering resources to improvements in the software. It was not lost on Apple or its mainstream developers that the power HyperCard gave to people could cut into the sales of ordinary shrink wrapped products.
HyperCard 2.0
In late 1989, Kevin Calhoun, then a HyperCard engineer at Apple, led an effort to upgrade the program. This resulted in 1990's HyperCard 2.0. The new version included an on-the-fly compilerCompiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
that greatly increased performance of computationally intensive code, a new debugger
Debugger
A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs . The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an instruction set simulator , a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered but which...
and a number of improvements to the underlying HyperTalk language.
At the same time HyperCard 2.0 was being developed, a separate group within Apple developed and in 1991 released "HyperCard IIGS", a version of HyperCard for the Apple IIGS
Apple IIGS
The Apple , the fifth and most powerful model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The "GS" in the name stands for Graphics and Sound, referring to its enhanced graphics and sound capabilities, both of which greatly surpassed previous models of the line...
system. Aimed mainly at the education market, HyperCard IIGS had roughly the same feature set as the 1.x versions of Macintosh HyperCard, while adding support for the color graphics capabilities of the IIGS. Although "stacks" (HyperCard program documents) were not binary-compatible, a translator program (itself a HyperCard stack) allowed stacks to be moved from one platform to the other.
Then, Apple decided that most of its application software packages, including HyperCard, would be the property of a wholly owned subsidiary called Claris
Claris
Claris was a computer software developer formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and...
. Many of the HyperCard developers chose to stay at Apple rather than move to Claris, causing the development team to be split. Claris, in the business of selling software for a profit, attempted to create a business model where HyperCard could also generate revenues. They wrote a new "viewer only" version, the HyperCard Player which Apple distributed with the Macintosh operating system, while Claris sold the "full" version commercially. Many users were upset that they had to pay to use software that had traditionally been supplied free and which many considered a basic part of the Mac.
Despite the new revenue stream, Claris did little to market HyperCard. Development continued with minor upgrades, as well as the first failed attempt to create a third generation of HyperCard. During this period, HyperCard began losing market share. Without a number of important, basic features, HyperCard authors began moving to systems such as SuperCard
SuperCard
SuperCard is a high-level development environment that runs on Macintosh computers, under OS 8 and 9, and OS X. It is inspired by HyperCard, but includes a richer language, a full GUI toolkit, and native color .The programming language used by SuperCard is called SuperTalk, and is largely based on...
and Macromedia Authorware
Macromedia Authorware
Macromedia Authorware was an interpreted, flowchart based, graphical programming language. Authorware is used for creating interactive programs that can integrate a range of multimedia content, particularly e-learning applications...
. Nevertheless HyperCard continued to be popular and used for a widening range of applications, from the game The Manhole
The Manhole
The Manhole is a computer adventure game intended for children in which the player opens a manhole and reveals a gigantic beanstalk that can be climbed either up or down, leading to fantastic worlds in either case.-Summary:...
, an earlier effort by the creators of Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
, to corporate information services and many thousands in between.
Apple eventually folded Claris back into the parent company, returning HyperCard to Apple's core engineering group. In 1992, Apple released the eagerly anticipated upgrade of HyperCard 2.2 and made many HyperCard enthusiasts happy by including licensed versions of Color Tools and Addmotion II, adding support for color pictures and animations. However, these tools were limited and often cumbersome to use because HyperCard still lacked true, internal color support.
HyperCard 3.0
Several attempts were made to restart HyperCard development once it returned to Apple. Because of the product's widespread use as a multimedia-authoring tool it was rolled into the QuickTimeQuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
group. A new effort to allow HyperCard to create QuickTime interactive (QTi) movies started, once again under the direction of Kevin Calhoun. QTi extended QuickTime's core multimedia playback features to provide true interactive facilities and a low-level programming language based on 68000 assembly language.
The resulting HyperCard 3.0 was first presented in 1996 when an alpha-quality version was shown to developers at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference
Worldwide Developers Conference
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is a conference held annually in California by Apple Inc. The conference is primarily used by Apple to showcase its new software and technologies for developers, as well as offering hands-on labs and feedback sessions...
. Under the leadership of Dan Crow development continued through the late 1990s, with public demos showing many popular features such as color support, internet connectivity, and the ability to play HyperCard stacks (which were now special QuickTime movies) in a web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
. Development of HyperCard 3.0 stalled when the QuickTime team was focused away from development of QuickTime interactive to the streaming features of QuickTime 4.0. Finally in 2000 the HyperCard engineering team was reassigned to other tasks after Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
decided to abandon the product. Calhoun and Crow both left Apple shortly after in 2001.
In the years that followed, the program saw no additional support from Apple. Apple finally ceased selling HyperCard in March 2004.
HyperCard runs natively only in Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
versions 9 or earlier, but it can still be used in Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
's Classic
Classic (Mac OS X)
Classic, or Classic Environment, was a hardware and software abstraction layer in Mac OS X that allowed applications compatible with Mac OS 9 to run on the Mac OS X operating system...
mode on PowerPC based machines (G5 and earlier). The last functional native HyperCard authoring environment is Classic mode in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) on PowerPC based machines (although it can be run on modern Intel-based machines by using an emulation layer such as SheepShaver
SheepShaver
SheepShaver is an open source PowerPC Apple Macintosh emulator originally designed for BeOS and Linux. The name is a play on ShapeShifter, a Macintosh II emulator for AmigaOS , which is in turn not to be confused with a third-party preference pane for Mac OS X with the same name...
).
Exploits
The first HyperCard virus was discovered in Belgium and the Netherlands in April 1991.Because HyperCard executed scripts in stacks immediately on opening, it was also one of the first applications susceptible to macro viruses
Macro virus (computing)
In computing terminology, a macro virus is a virus that is written in a macro language: that is to say, a language built into a software application such as a word processor...
. The Merryxmas virus was discovered in early 1993 by Ken Dunham, two years before the "Concept" virus. There were very few viruses based on HyperCard, and their overall impact was minimal.
Legacy
HyperCard is one of the first products that made use of and popularized the hypertextHypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
concept to a large popular base of users. However, it was preceded by Paul Heckel's
Zoomracks
Zoomracks
Zoomracks was a shareware database management system for the Atari ST and IBM PC that used a card-file metaphor for displaying and manipulating data...
.
Jakob Nielsen
Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant)
Jakob Nielsen is a leading web usability consultant. He holds a Ph.D. in human–computer interaction from the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen.-Early life and background:...
has pointed out that HyperCard was really only a hypermedia
Hypermedia
Hypermedia is a computer-based information retrieval system that enables a user to gain or provide access to texts, audio and video recordings, photographs and computer graphics related to a particular subject.Hypermedia is a term created by Ted Nelson....
program since its links started from regions on a card, not text objects; actual HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
-style text hyperlink
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
s were possible in later versions, but were awkward to implement and seldom used. Bill Atkinson later lamented that if he had only realized the power of network-oriented stacks, instead of focusing on local stacks on a single machine, HyperCard could have become the first Web browser.
HyperCard saw a loss in popularity with the growth of the World Wide Web, since the Web could handle and deliver data in much the same way as HyperCard without being limited to files on one's own hard disk. HyperCard had a significant impact on the web as it inspired the creation of both HTTP itself (through its influence on Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...
's colleague Robert Cailliau
Robert Cailliau
Robert Cailliau , born 26 January 1947, is a Belgian informatics engineer and computer scientist who, together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, developed the World Wide Web.-Biography:...
), and JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
(whose creator, Brendan Eich
Brendan Eich
Brendan Eich is a computer programmer and creator of the JavaScript scripting language. He is the chief technology officer at the Mozilla Corporation.-Education:...
, was inspired by HyperTalk
HyperTalk
HyperTalk is a high-level, procedural programming language created in 1987 by Dan Winkler and used in conjunction with Apple Computer's HyperCard hypermedia program by Bill Atkinson. The main target audience of HyperTalk was beginning programmers, hence HyperTalk programmers were usually called...
). It was also a key inspiration for ViolaWWW
ViolaWWW
ViolaWWW, first developed in the early 1990s, for Unix and the X Windowing System, was the first popular web browser which, until Mosaic, was the most frequently used web browser for access to the World Wide Web...
, an early web browser.
The pointing-finger cursor
Cursor (computers)
In computing, a cursor is an indicator used to show the position on a computer monitor or other display device that will respond to input from a text input or pointing device. The flashing text cursor may be referred to as a caret in some cases...
used for navigating stacks later found its way into the first web browsers, as the hyperlink cursor.
The Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
computer game franchise, initially released as a HyperCard stack and included bundled with some Macs (for example the Performa 5300), still lives on, making HyperCard a facilitating technology for starting one of the best-selling computer games of all time.
According to Ward Cunningham
Ward Cunningham
Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham is an American computer programmer who developed the first wiki. A pioneer in both design patterns and Extreme Programming, he started programming the software WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on the website of his software consultancy, Cunningham & Cunningham , on...
, the inventor of Wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s, the wiki concept can be traced back to a HyperCard stack he wrote in the late 1980s, making HyperCard one of the grandparents of the Wiki idea.
Similar systems
Other companies offered their own versions. Four products are currently available which offer HyperCard-like functionality:- HyperNextHyperNextHyperNext is a freeware visual software development system aimed at beginner programmers that runs on Macintosh and Windows computers. It was inspired by HyperCard and includes a GUI having controls such as buttons and listboxes, and an interpreted English-like programming language. HyperNext also...
is a software development system that uses many ideas from HyperCard and can create both standalone applications and stacks that run on the freeware Hypernext Player. HyperNextHyperNextHyperNext is a freeware visual software development system aimed at beginner programmers that runs on Macintosh and Windows computers. It was inspired by HyperCard and includes a GUI having controls such as buttons and listboxes, and an interpreted English-like programming language. HyperNext also...
is available for Mac OS X & Mac OS 9, and Windows XP & Vista. - HyperStudioHyperStudioHyperStudio is a HyperCard clone, which appeared only a few years after the release of HyperCard, in 1988. It can be described as a multimedia authoring tool, and it provides relatively simple methods for combining varied media...
, one of the first HyperCard clones, is, as of 2009, currently developed and published by Software MacKievSoftware MacKievSoftware MacKiev is a company specialized in consumer and educational software development and publishing for Macintosh, Windows, and mobile platforms...
. - LiveCodeLiveCodeThe LiveCode programming language is a commercial cross-platform rapid application development language inspired by Hypercard's programming language HyperTalk.The language was first introduced in 2001...
, published by RunRev, expands greatly on HyperCard's feature set and offers color and a GUI toolkit which can be deployed on many popular platforms (IOS, Android, Classic Macintosh system software, Mac OS X, Windows 98 through 7, and Linux/Unix). LiveCode directly imports existing HyperCard stacks and provides a migration path for stacks still in use. - SuperCardSuperCardSuperCard is a high-level development environment that runs on Macintosh computers, under OS 8 and 9, and OS X. It is inspired by HyperCard, but includes a richer language, a full GUI toolkit, and native color .The programming language used by SuperCard is called SuperTalk, and is largely based on...
being the first HyperCard clone, is similar to HyperCard, but with many additional features such as: full color support, pixel and vector graphics, a full GUI toolkit, and support for many modern Mac OS X features. It can create both standalone applications and projects that run on the freeware SuperCard Player. SuperCard can also convert existing HyperCard stacks into SuperCard projects. It runs only on Macs.
Past products included:
- PlusWinPlusWinPlus was a cross-platform clone of the Hypercard application that enables users to run HyperCard stacks on Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Windows and OS/2 ....
was a product similar to HyperCard for Windows and Macintosh. - Asymetrix's Windows application ToolBook resembled HyperCard, and later included an external converter to read HyperCard stacks (the first was a third-party product from Heizer software).
- OracleOracle CorporationOracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
purchased Plus and created a cross-platform version as OracleCard, later renamed Oracle Media ObjectsOracle Media ObjectsOracle Media Objects, formerly Oracle Card, was a multi-media software development tool for developing multi-media applications, with similar functionality and appearance to Apple Computer' HyperCard....
, used as a 4GL for database access. - TileStack was an attempt to create a web based version of HyperCard that is compatible with the original HyperCard files. The site closed down January 24, 2011.
In addition, many of the basic concepts of the original system were later re-used in other forms. Apple built their system-wide scripting engine AppleScript
AppleScript
AppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc. and built into Macintosh operating systems since System 7. The term "AppleScript" may refer to the scripting system itself, or to particular scripts that are written in the AppleScript language....
on a language similar to HyperTalk; it is often used for DTP
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
workflow automation needs. In the 1990s FaceSpan provided a third-party graphical interface, and continues to do so today. AppleScript also has a native graphical programming front-end called Automator, released with Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
10.4, codenamed Tiger, in April 2005. One of HyperCard's strengths was its handling of multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
, and many multimedia systems like Macromedia Authorware
Macromedia Authorware
Macromedia Authorware was an interpreted, flowchart based, graphical programming language. Authorware is used for creating interactive programs that can integrate a range of multimedia content, particularly e-learning applications...
and Macromedia Director are based on concepts originating in HyperCard .
AppWare
AppWare
AppWare was a rapid application development system for Microsoft Windows and the Mac OS based on a simple graphical programming language. AppWare was developed by Joseph Firmage and marketed by Serius, a company started by Firmage in 1989...
, originally known as Serius Developer, is sometimes seen to be similar to HyperCard, as they were both rapid application development
Rapid application development
Rapid application development is a software development methodology that uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping. The "planning" of software developed using RAD is interleaved with writing the software itself...
systems. AppWare was sold in the early 90s and worked on both Windows and Mac systems.
See also
- Apple Media ToolApple Media ToolThe Apple Media Tool was a multimedia authoring tool and associated programming environment sold by Apple in the late 1990s. It was primarily aimed at producing multimedia presentations for distribution on CD-ROM and was aimed at graphic designers who did not have programming experience...
- Automator (software)Automator (software)Automator is an application developed by Apple for Mac OS X that implements point-and-click creation of workflows for automating repetitive tasks into batches for quicker alteration, thus saving time and effort over human intervention to manually change each file separately...
- HyperNextHyperNextHyperNext is a freeware visual software development system aimed at beginner programmers that runs on Macintosh and Windows computers. It was inspired by HyperCard and includes a GUI having controls such as buttons and listboxes, and an interpreted English-like programming language. HyperNext also...
- Morphic (software)Morphic (software)The name "Morphic" was taken from the Greek word "morph", its morphs taking on the role of "forms", the basic graphical building blocks in earlier Self systems and in Smalltalk MVC....
- mTropolisMTropolismTropolis was an award-winning, open-architecture multimedia programming application aimed at enabling rapid development of multimedia titles. It was developed by mFactory and introduced in 1995. It introduced object-oriented concepts such as reusable objects, modifiers and behaviors into the...
- NoteCardsNoteCardsNoteCards was a hypertext personal knowledge basesystem developed at Xerox PARC by Randall Trigg, Frank Halasz and Thomas Moran in 1984. NoteCards developed after Trigg became the first to write a Ph.D. thesis on hypertext while at the University of Maryland College Park in 1983...
- LiveCodeLiveCodeThe LiveCode programming language is a commercial cross-platform rapid application development language inspired by Hypercard's programming language HyperTalk.The language was first introduced in 2001...
- Stagecast CreatorStagecast CreatorStagecast Creator is a visual programming language intended for use in teaching programming to children. It is based on the programming by demonstration concept, where rules are created by giving examples of what actions should take place in a given situation...
- SuperCardSuperCardSuperCard is a high-level development environment that runs on Macintosh computers, under OS 8 and 9, and OS X. It is inspired by HyperCard, but includes a richer language, a full GUI toolkit, and native color .The programming language used by SuperCard is called SuperTalk, and is largely based on...
- ViolaWWWViolaWWWViolaWWW, first developed in the early 1990s, for Unix and the X Windowing System, was the first popular web browser which, until Mosaic, was the most frequently used web browser for access to the World Wide Web...
External links
- Computer Chronicles 1987 interview with Bill Atkinson and Dan Winkler demonstrating HyperCard (from Archive.org)
- A list of HyperCard links (Internet Archive)
- Teach Yourself HyperCard
- Hypercard Manual (pdf)
- HyperCard and AppleScript: in FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
- HyperCard conversion utility