In 1993, I custom designed and implemented a package of retail software for Keith's Comics, a Dallas-based chain of stores, which is still used and supported today. I used Nine to Five Software's Index and Reports Datapro to add powerful database capabilities to HyperCard. It includes: * customer database * customer requests and orders database * video rental software * customer subscriptions system (pull and hold service for periodicals) * ordering database which imports various text file catalog formats from distributor, and exports orders in the format required by the distributors * inventory tracking system * many different database reports It still lacks: * Point of sale interface to barcode readers...maybe someday. Keith's Comics (main store) 5736 E. Mockingbird Dallas TX 75206 214-827-3060
Comments to: Brad Allen
We have used HyperCard to create software widgets since we first saw it in 1987. Back then it was MacPaint cards and bit-map fonts for text. In 1992-ish, our Scriptor's Pal stack won us a copy of MacWrite Pro. In 1994, we produced our wilderness exploration game, Idle Wild on an LC III with 8 megs of RAM, using HyperCard. In 1999, we released our European exploration and trading game, EuroTrader. EuroTrader was produced periodically across three years. In 1996, the scenes from Europe were organized and a navigation interface was created for them. During 1997, a gaming interface was created that facilitated buying and selling from a list of goods and prices. During 1998, we used Ray Dream Studio and Poser to create rooms from some of the buildings in the pictures and create animated characters. What we learned was how to mix stereo sound with QuickTime animations created from our design tools, and use HyperCard to address them on CD-ROM. The result is an entertaining and educational software product that introduces one to Europe and Economics 101. We created EuroTrader, and Idle Wild, because we believe Apple HyperCard is as worthy a tool for addressing graphics and animation on CD as more expensive alternatives. We consider our titles to be wonderful demonstrations of what can be created, easily, with basic Apple technologies. We invite you to experience EuroTrader as an introduction to Apple HyperCard.
Comments to: R Charles & Charlene Flickinger
School, although boring, happened to have a copy of Hypercard on their computers. With a few friends, we started to write a game with strange sounds, images, and many many ways to unexpectedly make the game quit. Approprietly, we named it "Random" and that's what it was. We had things such as parodies of every fast food chain, a working electronic keyboard, lots of cards with strange designs, and more. When we let our classmates obtain copies, you wouldn't believe the amount of respect/admiration etc. we gained. Hypercard boosted my status while I was having fun! Since then, I've created 8 more stacks with my buddies.
Comments to: Freddie
I work for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney. One of the big events of the year in Sydney is the Royal Easter Show, which is very popular with children. We (the Online department of the ABC) had the idea of creating web pages on the spot for kids, using a Connectix WebCam. We sat the kids down in front of the Mac, had them pick which page design they wanted, got a few details, and took their picture, then the page was automatically generated by Hypercard with their picture in the middle. The idea was a big hit with kids and parents (we had a lot of people telling us "I'll email the grandparents overseas with the URL") and we even did one for the Deputy Prime Minister who dropped by as part of a different event. The resulting 120-odd pages (http://abc.net.au/eastershow/) were charming, good publicity for the organisation, and cost us nothing. The system, which I put together in one afternoon, ran happily all day without a hitch. We're considering using it at a number of future events. Everyone was amazed that I'd "written a program" which did so much in such a short time (and was able to reprogram it on the day in thirty seconds when we started getting duplicate filenames -- doh!).
Comments to: John Horner
For nearly ten years I worked as a volunteer at the Smithsonian
Institution's Naturalist Center. The Naturalist Center is a place where
people can bring objects they have found to be identified, where they can
develop their own skills at identification using real museum specimens and
our library and technical resources, and where they can ultimately learn to
read natural ojbects. My background as a geologist and experience in
developing Macintosh software was early on put to the task of developing an
online database to the Center's mineral collection. We used HyperCard
exclusively to develop databases of the collections, which we expanded to
include all the objects in the Center (about 30-50 thousand), but also to
automate identification keys, background materials ("help" stacks), and
day-to-day collections management tasks (specimen labelling, etc.).
Comments to: Peter K. Matthews
Parents evenings, where parents come to interview teachers about the progress of their offspring, can be a nightmare for all concerned. Parents seem to come all at the same time to see the same teacher causing long queues. The obvious thing to do was to have an appointment system where the interviews could be spread out over the evening. I wrote a HyperCard stack called Aptas to do just that. It takes the staff list and the list of pupils and produces and produces an individual appointment schedule for each teacher and each parent. We did have a program years ago runningb on an obsolete computer which did something similar but with HyperCard the big advantage was that non computer literate teachers could produce 'professional looking' appointment lists themselves in about an hour. Without HyperCard this solution would not have been available and its now being used by two other schools. Pupils attending our school can buy tickets to purchase food from the canteen. These tickets were normally issued on a daily basis requiring the pupils to queue during their break time. Commercial, plastic idcards were beyond the budget of the school so I designed a HyperCard stack which produces an 'id card' containining the pupil's photograph, if available, their name, class and school number. These are printed three to a page onto coloured card, trimmed to size and laminated. They are now issued by staff at registration time in the mornings and have proved so successful that the canteen is reporting increased sales!
Comments to: Ian McKnight
HyperCard has provided me with a method of programing that is both interesting and extremely functional. I have written stacks for many things such as Medicare payment documentation, Real Estate contract payments, numbered ticket printing, phone/address book with dialing, etc. but by far the most sophisticated is "HyperHandicap Prot", a complete package for recording, calculating and reporting golf handicaps & slope index for a large retirement resort in Mesa, AZ. The resort has been using this program successfully since 1991 for an average of 450 golfers per season. HyperHandicap Pro is a menu driven program that has been updated through the years to provided complete integration of up to four golf divisions (both 9 & 18 holes), club dues, inactive participants, one day and two day tournament eligibility & calculation, help file, and numerous types of reports. A runtime version of "Reports Data Pro" from Nine to Five Software Co. is used for all reports and views.
Comments to: Kelly Peavey
All contents copyright (C) 1996, HyperActive Software. All rights reserved.
Revised: October 29, 1999
URL: http://www.hyperactivesw.com/HCStories/stories.html