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#hypercard

1 post1 participant0 posts today

New #blog post: My Favorite GUI Programs

https://rldane.space/my-favorite-gui-programs.html

914 words

This is one of those fun cases where one blost begets another one in pretty rapid succession.
Nothing deep, just a fun little jaunt through computing memory lane.
I have Dave's toot to thank for the genesis of this post.

cc: my wonderful #chorus: @joel @dm @sotolf @thedoctor @pixx @orbitalmartian @adamsdesk @krafter @roguefoam @clayton @giantspacesquid @Twizzay @stfn

(I will happily add/remove you from the chorus upon request! :)

#100DaysToOffload #46

rldane.spaceMy Favorite GUI Programs

sadly lost to a domain squatter a decade ago, Smackerel interactive was a canadian multimedia design duo (dave groff and kevin steele). mac users might remember them as the creators of the Mackerel Stack - a goofy hypercard stack that equal parts interactive toy and business card

after the company closed, dave and kevin went on to write some online retrospectives about art & design during the peak 1990s multimedia era. their mini-essays are succinct, thoughtful, and inspiring. i posted the first essay about hypercard a few months ago here: dialup.cafe/@vga256/1118969455

this is the second of those essays, recovered from the wbm... Learning From Limitations: When Bevelled Edges Were Cool.
web.archive.org/web/2010012713

kevin's a super nice guy. wish he had joined mastodon.

on june 5, bill atkinson passed away at the age of 74 at his home in portola valley, california. his family confirmed the cause was pancreatic cancer.

before the macintosh, computing was still largely limited to text commands. atkinson’s contributions made personal computing visual, intuitive and human centered. he believed deeply in the potential of technology to empower creativity and expression.

#lisa#mac#68k

Ever since I heard about Bill Atkinson’s passing, I’ve been diving into everything I can find about HyperCard. Today, while the world was glued to WWDC25, I was off exploring alternate timelines—asking ChatGPT what HyperCard and the world might have become if it had never been discontinued. It was a blast. 💥

I’ve witnessed only a tiny number of noteworthy moments in #tech, but as a summer intern in 1987 I attended MacWorld and was in the auditorium when Bill Atkinson introduced #HyperCard. Completely mind-blowing: graphics, simplicity, expressiveness.

I remember HyperTalk’s surprising use of `it` as an accumulator:

```
get the selection
put it into the message box
```

I can’t name a contemporary user-friendly #programming environment that lets you create apps/sites as easily as HyperCard did. ☹️

#grateful for Bill Atkinson and #HyperCard

HyperSchool is a HyperCard application for schools to do scheduling, attendance, and grades.

It includes thousands of lines of #HyperTalk code, plus some
C code to interface to a scantron machine and to do simulated annealing
before the user gets old.

I’m not a fan of self-boosting, but I realised I was remiss in not putting some hashtags on this post after it started gaining the small amount of traction it has.

For those who boosted or liked the original, I’m not asking or expecting a repeat. I just hope with these hashtags it gets a little more traction to acknowledge the genius of #BillAtkinson, who affected so many lives through the genius work he did.

I know he impacted many aspects of my life through the work he did on the Mac, the original System, and MacPaint, and it seems many others were similarly impacted.

It’s been truly inspiring for me to see Mac legends talk how he put the lie to the saying “Never meet your heroes”, as he seemed to have been a hero to many, and never a disappointment in person.

RIP, Bill. :alogo6:

#RIPBillAtkinson #HyperCard #MystGame #Lisa #ClassicMacOS #QuickDraw #Dithering #AtkinsonDithering #ClassicMacs #ClassicMacintosh #Mac128K #MarchingAnts #MacPaint #FatBits
social.europlus.zone/@europlus

the europlus zoneeuroplus :autisminf: (@europlus@europlus.zone)Just a reminder that the original Myst was developed using HyperCard, one of Bill Atkinson’s many masterpieces. But I’ll always remember how he thought overlapping windows (or perhaps the smooth movement of windows over each other) was a solveable problem because he recalled seeing that Xerox had solved it (they hadn’t), so he just worked it out because he then thought it could be. An amazing mind, now lost to us. RIP Bill, and thank you!