HyperCard is Dead. Long Live HyperCard!

I cut my professional teeth on HyperCard, writing VideoDisk XCMDs to allow a HyperCard stack to control a video presentation, back in 1986. Although I was a UNIX system programmer (cut me and I bleed regexp), it was Apple's HyperCard which best let me manipulate data for users.

And now it's back in the form of TileStack, a kind of re-imagination of HyperCard for a Web 2.0 environment. There have been other contenders (e.g Runtime Revolution) but they didn't have proper integration with the Web. Now I can write stacks (in a HyperTalk-like language) that use AJAX Web Services - XML, JSON the lot. I'm as happy as Larry!

The following embedded stack uses an idle handler to periodically make a Flickr API call and then set the icon of button n to media of item 1 of the items of JSONdata. I'd forgotten how simple this stuff was - come back Bill Atkinson, the Web needs you!