Users browse the stack by navigating from card to card, using built-in navigation features, a powerful search mechanism, or through user-created scripts. Each card contains a set of interactive objects, including text fields, check boxes, buttons, and similar common graphical user interface (GUI) elements. It is based on the concept of a "stack" of virtual "cards" which store data. HyperCard runs in the Classic Environment, but was not ported to Mac OS X. It was withdrawn from sale in March 2004, having received its final update in 1998 upon the return of Steve Jobs to Apple. HyperCard was originally released in 1987 for $49.95 and was included free with all new Macs. HyperCard users often employed it as a programming system for Rapid Application Development of different kinds of applications, database and others. HyperCard includes a built-in programming language called HyperTalk (written by Dan Winkler) for manipulating data and the user interface. For Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS it combines a flat-file database with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard was a package for software development, created by Bill Atkinson, and was among the early hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. "Given the right push under Mac OS X, HyperCard could still be a great product, way ahead of anything else in the field.Macintosh HyperCard 1.0 Home > Browse Our Collection > Software > Apple Software > Macintosh HyperCard 1.0 "How such a forward-thinking company can allow such a clearly superb piece of software to stagnate is quite simply astonishing," he added. "I have yet to find anything with such a simple interface hiding a friendly script-language, whose apparent simplicity can be so superbly extended with external functions and commands," he said. "If you need something and you don't have several thousand dollars to hire a developer, HyperCard fills a niche."ĭavid Neale, who uses HyperCard to publish a number of Elvis Presley-related websites, said he fears for the software's future and has started experimenting with alternatives, including RealBasic, Perl and FileMaker, without much success. "In one afternoon I did what it took two professionals two or three weeks to do," he said. Mays, who owns two Dallas fast-food franchises, said a pair of professional programmers toiled for weeks to build a system that would report all the orders coming through his restaurants' registers.įearing they would never finish, Mays sat down and in a few hours created an application himself in HyperCard, which he still uses. HyperCard was the brainchild of programming genius Bill Atkinson, who wanted a programming tool "for the rest of us." The only people that are not behind it are Apple (executives) right now."īefore HyperCard, programming was more or less the exclusive domain of professional programmers. Their efforts culminated in a meeting with Phil Schiller, Apple's head of worldwide marketing, who reportedly ended up asking them, "But how do we sell it?" Clearly, Schiller wasn't convinced by iHug's answers.īut Mays said, "People keep using it and people keep buying it off the Apple website. IHug campaigned vigorously for several years, with little luck. HyperCard is still, at heart, black and white. IHug wants to see HyperCard ported to run on Mac OS X, and the incorporation of overdue features, like fully integrated color. IHug runs an active mailing list and publishes a line of promotional CDs with sample HyperCard stacks and applications. I never knew you could do that so easily with a computer.'" "When people see what you can do with it, they say, 'Wow. "People send (money) in because they like HyperCard so much," said iHug president Michael Mays. Two or three times a year iHug collects several thousand dollars in donations to set up booths at Macworld Expo and promote HyperCard on Apple's behalf. The HyperCard torch is carried by iHug, which has 300 or 400 active members.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |