HyperCard Comes Back From the Dead to the Web

TedCHoward writes "On the heels of the recent mention of HyperCard comes the launch of a brand new site called TileStack. Cnet's Webware blog writes, 'The idea behind it is to bring old HyperCard stacks back to life by putting them on the Web, meaning you can take some of those long lost creations from the late '80s and early '90s and make them working Web apps. You simply upload them to TileStack's servers and they'll be converted and hosted for just you or the entire world to use once again... Since the service runs without Flash... TileStack is perfect for the iPhone and other devices that run on the Web.' They also have a video showing the upload process."

Comments

Re:But can we make new stacks?

[PHPNerd]

Oh yes. You can create new stacks. I was in the beta program, and it was really easy to use too.

Re:But can we make new stacks?

[David Hume]

i clicked the links, and it's a good chance i'm just an idiot, but I couldn't tell if there was going to be anyway to create new stacks. The beauty of hypercard, from what I recall, was that it had a pretty simple interface for creating the stacks. I remember doing an entire multimedia presentation with hypercard back in highschool in the 90s. while everyone else did powerpoint and thought the clip art was cool, i was making stuff move using sound and embedding quicktime video. granted, all that is easy (easier?) to do now, but back then, it was cool stuff.

The answer appears to be yes. If you RTFFAQ:

Essentially TileStack can be thought of as an online playground where people of all ages are free to create neat things that we call 'stacks'. Adapting concepts from the incredibly popular classic HyperCard system from Apple, a stack consists of one or more 'tiles' that take a person who uses the stack down a path leading from one tile to the next. In a simple case, each tile can contain a different picture and text, in effect creating a simple online and shareable slideshow.

You can also add buttons to any tile that respond to something a user does. For example, clicking on a doorway in a picture could display the message "Welcome to My Home" and then go to the next tile in the stack that shows a picture of the inside of the home.

You can add input fields to tiles to create a custom system for storing information. Have a collection of recipes? Would you like to organize your movie collection? Just create a stack that fits what you needs. And of course, after you create something neat, you can publish your creation on TileStack.com for others to use and learn from.

Likewise you can explore the published stacks that others have made. Making it easy to learn new things and pick up cool ideas. And finally, if you happen to have some of classic HyperCard stacks laying around, you can upload them to TileStack.com and use them once again!

Re:I'm new around here...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

HyperCard is an old application that allowed you to create files that were "stacks" of cards that contained text, media, etc and linked to one another. Consider each card to be a Web page and each stack to be a Web site, Intranet, or Web app rolled up into a single file. This all predated the Web, of course, but was pretty powerful and had a really, really easy development tool that could be used by complete novices.

A lot of early games, especially choose your own adventure style ones, as well as multimedia presentations, and educational tools were created as HyperCard stacks. This Web site is just allowing people to dig them up, dust them off, and play with them again (without paying for one of the commercial HyperCard programs still out there, or using a VM).

Re:3.5 inch floppy

[david.given]

Now all I need is a machine that can read a 3.5 inch floppy.

It's worse than that. Apple floppy disks were written with constant linear velocity --- i.e., as the head moves towards the centre of the disk, the rotation speed goes up so that the magnetic medium still passes the head at the same velocity.

PCs, and therefore all modern hardware, use constant angular velocity floppy disks --- the disk spins at a constant speed, so that the speed at which the magnetic medium passes the head varies depending where the head is. Yes, this is clearly a bad idea, but that's PCs for you.

This means that no modern hardware can read old Apple floppy disks. It's just not possible. You'll need an old Macintosh floppy drive and (probably) an old Macintosh floppy drive controller to plug it into, which basically means you need an old Macintosh. You still have yours, right? Right?

Have fun!

Re:3.5 inch floppy

[tepples]

Apple floppy disks were written with constant linear velocity --- i.e., as the head moves towards the centre of the disk, the rotation speed goes up so that the magnetic medium still passes the head at the same velocity. Actually, the Apple 400K and 800K drives used zone CAV. Modern PC hard drives, magneto-optical drives, and DVD-RAM drives also use zone CAV.

Re:why?

[Enderandrew]

http://www.koffice.org/krita/
http://www.inkscape.org/
http://www.gimpshop.com/
http://www.getpaint.net/

You can even get an Alpha of Krita 2.0 for Windows these days. All of those are free.

Re:3.5 inch floppy

[jgertzen]

Actually they seem to be willing to help people out who don't have 3.5 floppies any more. Per their FAQ "Is there anything I can do with stacks I have on old floppy disks?"

"If you have some old HyperCard stacks lying around on floppy disks that you can't read because you either don't have a computer with a floppy drive, then we'll gladly do our best to import them on our vintage hardware here in CodeFlare labs."

...just send your floppies in appropriate packaging to...

Their mailing address is in the FAQ for anyone who wants to give it a shot.

Re:3.5 inch floppy

[TedCHoward]

Actually, you can mail your floppies to TileStack, and they will upload them for you. From the faq:

Send your floppies in appropriate packaging to:
CodeFlare
5919 Greenville #335
Dallas, TX 75206-1906