I think that would be Decker (https://internet-janitor.itch.io/decker). Not my project but I found it some time ago when I searched for Hypercard successors. The neat thing is that it works in the browser.

This gets mentioned pretty much every time HyperCard is --- but I can't see that anyone has done anything with it.

Why use it rather than Livecode (aside from the licensing of the latter) or Hypernext Studio?

There's a fair amount of usage of it on Itch.io, if you are into that indie crowd. I was skeptical of it at first -- the whole 1-bit dithering aesthetic seems a bit too retro-twee, but I find it it is the best Hypercard-alike in terms of functionality -- it "just works" as compared to most Hyperclones that seem more like a proof of concept than a functional program.

Some programs, games, and zines made with Decker: https://itch.io/games/tag-decker

Unlike LiveCode (or so far as I am aware HyperNext), Decker is free and open-source: https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Decker

Hypernext doesn't appear to be actively developed; the most recent updates I see are from last year. Decker's most recent release was yesterday morning.

I'd be happy to go into more detail if you like.

Livecode used to be opensource, which made me want to use it, but that window closed.

I guess I want a Flash replacement....

https://ruffle.rs/ recently came to my attention when I needed to resuscitate a back into tool that had been completely built in Macromedia products

Flash completely missed the point of HyperCard, which was that end users could put it into edit mode, explore the source code, learn from it, extend it, copy parts of it out, and build their own user interfaces with it.

It's not just "View Source", but "Edit Source" with a built-in interactive WYSIWYG editor that anyone can use.

Alan Kay on “Should web browsers have stuck to being document viewers?” and a discussion of Smalltalk, HyperCard, NeWS, and HyperLook

https://donhopkins.medium.com/alan-kay-on-should-web-browser...

SimCity, Cellular Automata, and Happy Tool for HyperLook (nee HyperNeWS (nee GoodNeWS))

https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-go...

HyperLook SimCity Demo Transcript

https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-simcity-demo-transcr...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34134403

DonHopkins on Dec 26, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

Speaking about HyperCard, creating web pages, and publishing live interactive HyperCard stacks on the web, I wrote this about LiveCard:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22283045

DonHopkins on Feb 9, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: HyperCard: What Could Have Been (2002)

Check out this mind-blowing thing called "LiveCard" that somebody made by combining HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar (a Mac web server by Chuck Shotton that supported integration with other apps via Apple Events)! It was like implementing interactive graphical CGI scripts with HyperCard, without even programming (but also allowing you to script them in HyperTalk, and publish live HyperCard databases and graphics)! Normal HyperCard stacks would even work without modification. It was far ahead of its time, and inspired me to integrate WebStar with ScriptX to generate static and dynamic HTML web sites and services!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783227

>In fact, one of the earliest tools that enabled anyone, even children, to author and publish their own interactive dynamic web applications with graphics, text, and even forms and persistent databases, was actually based on HyperCard and the MacHTTP/WebStar web server on the Mac:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209

>One of the coolest early applications of server side scripting was integrating HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar, such that you could publish live interactive HyperCard stacks on the web! Since it was based on good old HyperCard, it was one of the first scriptable web authoring tools that normal people and even children could actually use!

MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton, and LiveCard HyperCard stack publisher:

CGI and AppleScript:

http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1...

>Cal discusses the Macintosh as an Internet platform, then describes how you can use the AppleScript language for writing CGI applications that run on Macintosh servers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263

MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton! He was also VP of Engineering at Quarterdeck, another pioneering company.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astron...

http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machtt...

http://tidbits.com/article/6292

>It had an AppleScript / OSA API that let you write handlers for responding to web hits in other languages that supported AppleScript.

I used it to integrate ScriptX with the web:

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.htm...

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-develop...

The coolest thing somebody did with WebStar was to integrate it with HyperCard so you could actually publish live INTERACTIVE HyperCard stacks on the web, that you could see as images you could click on to follow links, and followed by html form elements corresponding to the text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, drop down menus, scrolling lists, etc in the HyperCard stack that you could use in the browser to interactive with live HyperCard pages!

That was the earliest easiest way that non-programmers and even kids could both not just create graphical web pages, but publish live interactive apps on the web!

Using HyperCard as a CGI application

https://web.archive.org/web/20060205023024/http://aaa-protei...

https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.co...

http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1...

https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royals...

What was it actually ever used for? Saving kid's lives, for one thing:

>Livecard has exceeded all expectations and allows me to serve a stack 8 years in the making and previously confined to individual hospitals running Apples. A whole Childrens Hospital and University Department of Child Health should now swing in behind me and this product will become core curriculum for our medical course. Your product will save lives starting early 1997. Well done.

- Director, Emergency Medicine, Mater Childrens Hospital

Also (a historical note about web browsers with editors, not about HyperCard):

NetScape Gold had a built-in WYSIWYG HTML editor window. But it was a unique selling point -- earlier and other versions of browsers didn't support that. Now browsers have official APIs to support WYSIWYG HTML editing via the "contenteditable" attribute, execCommand function, and Selection class, but you have to implement the menus and toolbars of the user interface yourself, and there are a lot of libraries for that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape#Netscape_Navigator_(v...

>Netscape also released a Gold version of Navigator 3.0 that incorporated WYSIWYG editing with drag and drop between web editor and email components.[49]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Composer

https://www.ou.edu/class/webstudy/n4/old/N_GOLD_Editor_Windo...

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_att...

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/interaction.html#attr...

https://w3c.github.io/editing/docs/execCommand/#execcommand%...

https://w3c.github.io/selection-api/#selection-interface

You're right. Flash and its legacy would have been better if it had built in "Edit Source".

The earliest Flash projects were these artful assemblages of scripts dangling from nested timelines, like an Alexander Calder mobile. They were at times labyrinthine, like they are in many similar tools, but there were ways to mitigate that. Later on, AS3 code was sometimes written like Java, because we wanted to be taken seriously.

Many Flash community members wanted to share their source, wanted a space where interested people could make changes. We did the best we could, uploading FLA files and zipped project directories. None of it turned out to be especially resilient.

It's one of the things I admire about Scratch. If you want, you can peek inside, and it's all there, for you to learn from and build off of, with virtually no arbitrary barriers in place.

Pretty sure the next after Hypercard was Macromind (later Macromedia) Director. I recall running an early version of a Director animation on a black and white Mac not long after I started playing with Hypercard. Later I was a Director developer. I recall when Future Splash released -- the fast scaling vector graphics were a new and impressive thing. The web browser plugin helped a lot and it really brought multimedia to the browser. It was only later that Macromedia acquired Future Splash and renamed it Flash.

- Minecraft - Roblox - LittleBigPlanet - Mario Maker

This is what kids do to be creative.

Slightly more serious (and therefore less succesful): - Logo/Turtle Graphics - Scratch - HyperStudio

HyperCard was both graphic design and hypertext (links). These two modalities got separated, and I think there are practical reasons for that. Because html/css design actually sucks and never became an amateur art form.

For writing and publishing we got Wiki, Obsidian et al, Blogs (RIP), forums, social media. Not meant to be interactive or programmable, but these fulfill people's needs for publishing.

Yeah, that sums things up well --- the problem of course is what happens when one works on a project which blurs boundaries.

I had to drop into BlockSCAD to rough out an arc algorithm for my current project:

https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

(see the subsubsection "Arcs for toolpaths and DXFs")

Jupyter Notebooks come close to allowing a seamless blending of text and algorithm, but they are sorely missing on the graphic design and vector graphics front --- which now that I write that, makes me realize that that is the big thing which I miss when trying to use them. Makes me wish for JuMP, a Jupyter Notebook which incorporates METAPOST --- if it also had an interactive drawing mode, it would be perfect.... (for my needs).

Have you seen Scrappy? It’s still early, but it’s the most interesting thing I’ve seen in a while.

https://pontus.granstrom.me/scrappy/