HyperCard Simulator

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

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/ [1]https://htmx.org/

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

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?

How does this compare to Decker ?

https://beyondloom.com/decker/index.html

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.

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.

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.

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.

I want this:

- as an actual app on my Mac

- not in retro/bw but with a high res and high colors support

Please

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.

[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

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

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.

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

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

Rummy circle all jokar follow me