HyperCard


HyperCard

A software package by Bill Atkinson for storage and retrievalof information on the Macintosh. It can handle images andis designed for browsing. The powerful customisableinteractive user interface allows new applications to beeasily constructed by manipulating objects on the screen,often without conventional programming, though the languageHyperTalk can be used for more complex tasks.

Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.sys.mac.hypercard.

["Apple Macintosh HyperCard User Guide", Apple Computer 1987].

HyperCard

An early Macintosh application development system from Apple that was one of the first visual tools for building hyperlinked applications. "Stacks" of "cards" were built that held text, graphics, sound and video with links between them. Complex routines could be embedded in the cards using the HyperTalk programming language.

The HyperCard program had to be resident in the computer to run the stack (the program). Although HyperCard compilers were available from third parties, a runtime engine was eventually included in the stack so that HyperCard did not have to be installed on the target machine. HyperCard came out in 1987, and although it was used to create myriad applications, and many programmers loved it, Apple stopped enhancing it after the turn of the century and stopped selling it in 2004. See hypertext and LiveCode.