HyperCard's extraordinary versatility allows expert programers to build useful application quicker and better than with any other offering. I came across a multimedia/database application for comic book enthusiasts, written in HyperCard, at the largest comic book trade show in the world. The business and product were so popular I barely got to talk to the author. He told me how very disappointing it was to hack together for Windows an application that went together so elegantly with HyperCard. Four years ago I started working with HyperCard. Its uniquely easy starting point allowed me to learn how to build applications as a layperson. Today I say with confidence, astonishment, and much appreciation to Apple, that I am a programmer. This could only have been done outside of academia so gracefully through the nurturing qualities of HyperCard. Today I have 2, 40-hour per week user/beta sites who rave about how great my full-featured contact management application is compared to the ones that came free on their Macs such as Now Contact, and the demos they have tried of Act! Nearly 1,000 pages of code and 4 years of intense, meticulous development have brought a commercially competitive contact management application nearly to market. The application will be ready for larger beta testing in a couple months. Steve Collins brewster1@earthlink.net
Comments to: Steve Collins
One of my best stacks lets adult language learners practice English grammar. They get spoken feedback on right and wrong answers, animated presentations and the ones who don't know the keyboard yet can do the exercises by clicking and dragging. Teachers can customize the stack and get a printout of students' progress. And for the classes or schools that have only one Mac in them the teacher can set up the stack as an archive of printable exercises. The print version is laid out properly for the page, while the screen version takes proper advantage of that medium. My school board paid me to develop this stack and distributes it fee to schools. The name ? Gram'a'fun. The other good work I've done is a student file management stack. It does grades and attendance which is nothing very new but it does one thing which is unique to us. Our adult learners have to finish their courses within a deadline. Each course is supposed to take a certain number of hours depending on its difficulty and the adults are supposed to work at their own speed. Well, they don't often realize they're falling behind -- or even that they need to plan their work -- until it's too late and they have to abandon their hopes for a diploma. My stack calculates their deadlines for them and lets their teachers stay on top of any changes. The teachers who use it say their students start working faster and better within a month after their progress starts being tracked. Of course this stack does more -- generates reports, excahges data with other stacks and soon with other programs, updates itself and more. But one of the neat things about HyperCard is that stacks can be updated and redesigned so easily. A teacher will come to me asking for a feature or a change and often she gets it the next day. Our school wired up with an AppleShare server and an Ethernet network because of my work. I've done more: exercises for groups of students to use in class, file massagers and animations -- but the first two stacks are the ones I'm most proud of.
Comments to: Toby Earp
I work in the publishing industry doing everything from magazines to newspapers to catalogs to web sites. HyperCard allows me to customize any publishing environment. It fills in the cracks, spans the gaps, and makes "French Pastry" out of plain old flour and water. Consider my HyperDummy. This stack takes a Unix file of ads of various dimensions running in the next publication, automatically stacks them on virtual "pages" in HyperCard (allowing the user to drag them to any page and position), and then not only builds an entire Quark publication based on the ad placements, but also fills the Quark picture boxes with the EPS ads and makes headline and story boxes around the ads and fills them with appropriate stories from a FileMaker database. Entire publications are built this way with minimal staff time. Show me an app that does this, for less than $10k, that I can customize to the nth degree. Or consider the importance of tagging systems: HTML, Quark Tags, RTF, whatever. There is no other programming environment that allows faster or better handling of automation of publishing tasks via tagging systems. Do you really think designers learn Perl or C? HyperTalk is understandable and USEABLE by non-techs. No data typing to deal with, for example. Everything is text. It's English, not symbolism. It's light years ahead of its closest rival (AppleScript) for ease of use by people who are experts at something other than computer programming. Used as a front end for AppleScript, HyperCard becomes even more powerful, easily controlling other applications (except Microsoft apps, of course). And AppleScript gets an interface. It's not that HyperCard is relatively cheap, which it is. The fact is, it is insanely robust at a variety of tasks. I couldn't use C or Pascal Visual BASIC or Java or JavaScript. But I can use HyperCard and HyperTalk with ease, for so many things. I think I'm in the vast majority. What other product allows so many to do so much? I think HyperCard, like AppleScript, is a key advantage of the Macintosh platform.
Comments to: Michael Pease
Accommodata Corporation, an Apple Developer and approved indirect VAR, provides a complete solution to medical professionals in the field of Ophthalmology and Optometry. We produce a number of products based on Hypercardª: The Portalª Exam Station, The Portalª TeleCapture Station, and The Portalª Review Station. These represent a complete visual acuity testing package, medical image capture, stereo image processing, monocular and stereo viewing, telemedicine and education. Our systems have been used by doctors at Johns/Hopkins, Wilmer Eye Institute, The Cleveland Clinic Eye Institute, The Midwest Eye Institute, and The Ohio Eye Alliance. Many noted doctors in sub speciality fields, pediatrics, neuro, etc have remarked upon the quality, accuracy and ease of use of the systems. Many product development leaders within the industry from Nikon, Topcon and Essilor are impressed with the quality of the interface and the ease of use. I will be glad to supply specifics if requested. Hypercardª is our software of chioce! Paul James Podnar President
Comments to: Paul James Podnar
I am using HyperCard since 1988. I came to HyperCard having background in scientific and commercial software development. My software experience included Assemblers, PL/I, FORTRAN, Algol-68, Lisp, IDS and many other languages on different platforms, but HyperCard impressed me forever! Today I have two computers on my desk: PowerMac and Pentium II, and I need Mac only because of HyperCard. I am consulting big enterprises here in Russia and you'll be suprised, how HyperCard help me in developing knowledge base with information about complicated business. I connected HyperCard with Intranet and with corporate SQL servers. I am using stacks to collect ideas, facts, data, etc. about the business, and to link everything with everything. Nobody in the company ever asked me -- "Why you need Mac on my desk?", the most frequent question is -- "Why you need PC on your desk?". My first commercial application in HyperCard was developed for clinical decision making. The neural net based solution helped in making correct and quick decision in urgent abdominant illness. After presentation that stack on the Software Expo in Russia, I got a number of suggestions to develop decision making application for business executives. So, I got contracts with the shipyard, local government and the construction company. As the result of working with business experts, I developed NNB -- XCMD toolbox for experts and consultants in business. I am continue to use HyperCard and found the absence of internetability. To make HyperCard open to the Web I developed HyperHTTP -- the set of XCMDs to communicate with the Internet. This set allows easy develop Internet oriented applications in HyperCard. I even making few dollars selling this tools over the Web as shareware now! http://private.convey.ru/apreal/neuropage/ http://members.aol.com/stolkachev
Comments to: Sergey Tolkachev
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Revised: November 6, 1998
URL: http://www.hyperactivesw.com/HCStories/stories.html