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Hypercard on the Archive (2017)
- dietrichepp 4y agoThe Internet Archive lets you run HyperCard stacks by emulating the entire Macintosh system, but you can also use the HyperCard Simulator: https://hcsimulator.com/ https://hcsimulator.com/ You can click on a menu at the top right to bring up a list of stacks. It simulates HyperCard directly rather than simulating an entire Macintosh, so it’s a lot faster and more convenient to work with. Not all stacks are compatible, but there’s a wide selection.
- hyperhello 4y agoTo clarify, all stacks are compatible, including the built in color tools. If there’s an XCMD inside that has not been supported yet, the stack will still run otherwise.
- mikewarot 4y agoNot being an Apple/Mac user, I was able to get into the "About Hypercard" box, but never back out. There doesn't appear to be a way to close dialog boxes.
- pmcjones 4y agoKeep clicking in the box until it goes away.
- mikewarot 4y ago[Edit] Ok... weird GUI behavior, thanks for the help. I had no expectation that the above menus had anything to do with the open window. Especially when if you click on them, they don't open. --- Steps to reproduce: Open HyperCard 2.0 [1] https://archive.org/details/hypercard_hypercard-20-macintalk https://archive.org/details/hypercard_hypercard-20-macintalk Boots into Macintosh, awesome! Open "Hypercard Sys 7" diskette from upper right corner Open up Hypercard 2.4 folder Open "About HyperCard" Shows About Hypercard screen, no way to close it. The Close box in the upper right does nothing. Escape does nothing, clicking incessantly does nothing.
- magillax 4y agofile > quit hypercard
- mikewarot 4y agoThere's no menu on the window. It's a dialog box with no way to close it. [Edit] It's since made sense... but single-clicking on the menu at the top of the screen briefly shows something, but it doesn't stay open, so I didn't think it was associated with the dialog. It's a horrible UI in terms of discoverability.
- Someone 4y agoOn the original Mac, you had to hold the mouse button down while making a menu item selection. I am not sure why they didn’t do what Windows later did, and allow users to open the menu with a click, and select an item with a second click, but it might be as simple as that the thought hadn’t crossed their mind.
- hugi 4y agoAs a user that started my GUI life on an older Mac, hold-release menus always felt intuitive and "sticky menus" really felt weird when I first encountered them. The logic behind that initial design was that menus were really just "buttons with options" and a mouseup should initiate an action. The menus had few items so there wasn't much dragging involved. As software evolved, menus grew and spending an entire click on "present me with your selection of options" just became sensible.
- magillax 4y agothe bar at the top of the screen
- II2II 4y agoI don't know why Apple made the decisions they made, but we have to keep in mind that GUIs were novel to both developers and users back in the day. It is probable that Apple tested both click & release and click & hold on users, with the results indicating the latter was a better solution. Why would disappearing menus be a better solution? Perhaps people got trapped in menus when they stayed up after releasing the mouse button. We are talking about the early 1980's here, which was a time when some people were quite intimidated by computers. Few of those who had used computers would have encountered a mouse before. (Think of the famous scene with Scotty using a Mac in Star Trek IV.) Something like clicking on an unused area of the screen to make the menu go away would not have been intuitive, while some would have feared unintended consequences from clicking on the wrong thing.
- beambot 4y agoI always felt like Hypercard was one small step from owning the www & modern browsing experience. It was earth shattering in its time for the ability to rapidly build multimedia experiences & applications...
- tracker1 4y agoIIRC, the Myst game creator was largely inspired by HyperCard.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoMore than that, the first Myst game is literally a hypercard stack. They didn't make their own engine until the sequel, Riven, and the "Myst Masterpiece" remake.
- tracker1 4y agoYeah, I just vaguely remember something about it from a documentary I saw a while back.
- sircastor 4y agoOther Brøderbund games were HyperCard stacks too. I had Cosmic Osmo, and I remember playing The Manhole at a friends. These inspired me to make a Jurassic Park game using HyperCard. Sadly I didn’t get far.
- dang 4y agoDiscussed at the time (of the article): HyperCard On The Archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14985604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14985604 - Aug 2017 (115 comments)
- flairhop 4y agoThis was my introduction to writing computer logic or “programming”. Such a fun time. I remember distinctly plucking up the courage to ask for the HyperCard books from our school computer guy, it was that cool. GoldenEye HyperCard I was famous for 15 minutes.
- flairhopwhip 4y ago[dead]
- D-Coder 4y agoIf you want to stick with HyperCard, I recommend LiveCode (www.livecode.com). I have a dozen stacks or more that I use to keep track of things, remind me, my own very personalized calendar program, etc etc etc. They no longer have a free version, but to me it is well worth the approx $100/year.
- homarp 4y agostory of LiveCode stopping their open source version https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28370865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28370865 and an active fork https://github.com/OpenXTalk-org/OpenXtalk-IDE-DontPanicEdition https://github.com/OpenXTalk-org/OpenXtalk-IDE-DontPanicEdit...