‘A programming tool for the rest of us’

IDEA N^o 17

HYPERCARD

The year 1987 saw the release of the Apple Macintosh II. Bundled with it was a piece of software called HyperCard. This was the world’s first programming tool for non-programmers.

A screenshot from the HyperGlot language-teaching software, one of the many pieces of commercial software made on HyperCard.

HyperCard was created by Bill Atkinson, who also created MacPaint. His aim was to ‘bridge the gap between the priesthood of programmers and the Macintosh mouse clickers.’ The software allowed users to create a stack of cards, populated with text, images, audio and video. What made HyperCard powerful was that cards could be linked to one another. For the more ambitious, HyperCard included a scripting language called HyperTalk, which incorporated commands like ‘onMouseDown’, ‘go to’ or ‘play sound’. Aimed at novice programmers, it is a direct ancestor of languages like JavaScript, AppleScript and ActionScript that are still in use today.

All sorts of people and organizations used HyperCard to create applications, prototypes and interactive experiences that went far beyond Atkinson’s expectations. The Voyager Company used it extensively to create interactive CD-ROMs. Renault used it to manage its inventory. Libraries used it to catalogue their collections. Schools and hospitals used it as a teaching aid. Perhaps the most famous example of a HyperCard project is Myst, the most popular desktop computer game of the 1990s.

Despite such widespread adoption, HyperCard was not a commercial success. Some people within Apple even thought it might be detrimentally affecting the sales of their software division, Claris. With the growth of the Web, HyperCard’s popularity diminished and Apple sidelined the software. Macromedia stepped in to fill the void. Director, Flash and Dreamweaver targeted non-programmers in the same way HyperCard had a decade earlier. This suite of software, which owes so much to HyperCard, allowed artists and designers to play their part in shaping the Web.

HyperCard was the first hypermedia program, directly influencing the Web, the browser and countless websites. Tim Berners-Lee credits HyperCard as a direct inspiration for Enquire, the hypertext program that evolved into the Web. Pei-Yuan Wei incorporated HyperCard functionality within his influential web browser, ViolaWWW. Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki, says a HyperCard stack was his original inspiration.

Atkinson laments, ‘I grew up in a box-centric culture at Apple. If I’d grown up in a network-centric culture, like Sun, HyperCard might have been the first web browser.’ Despite this, HyperCard’s legacy is apparent to all. The Web made the internet more accessible. The browser did the same for the Web. Neither of these leaps would have been made if Bill Atkinson had not made ‘a programming tool for the rest of us.’■

‘Created to bridge the gap between the priesthood of programmers and the Macintosh mouse clickers.’

A screenshot from The Manhole, a children’s adventure game created using HyperTalk by Rand and Robyn Miller, who went on to create Myst.