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News about HyperCard 3.0 from Norway

News about HyperCard 3.0

In May 1996 Jon Pugh posted to the HyperCard Discussion List the following report:

Hypercard 3.0 is official and able to run demos. Kevin Calhoun showed it off at the WWDC in a session titled, Hypercard 3.0, the Phoenix Rises.

The key to the future of Hypercard is QuickTime 3.0. The QT folks were looking at adding a control language to QuickTime for what is now titled QTML (QuickTime Media Layer) and decided that Hypertalk was just what they wanted, so they are integrating that into QT, and consequently redoing Hypercard on top of this interactive QT.

What this means is that every Hypercard stack is a movie and can be played by ANY existing movie player, including (and demoed) MoviePlayer, WordPerfect, Netscape and OpenDoc's movie part.

It also means that full integrated color is finally here with complete painting tools and full importing, as well as cross platform playback, since players already exist for all three versions of Windows.

In addition, since they are making new media handlers, they are adding ones which can read media off the net, which makes it really easy to run your stacks in Netscape or CyberDog over the net since they start working the moment you download the first frame and they can reference content on multiple servers.

In addition, you can embed any QT content anywhere in Hypercard, so you can have QTVR, regular movies and sounds integrated right into your stacks.

Basically, this puts Hypercard more firmly into the multimedia authoring realm, in addition to making it even easier to make insanely cool interactive movies.

Later in May Kevin Calhoun added the following to Jon's report:

I'm glad to see that we've made a splash with our WWDC preview of HyperCard 3.0. Let me try to answer some questions.

First, QuickTime provides a standard format and playback mechanism for all kinds of stuff -- digital video and audio, obviously, but also 3D models, sprites, animations, text, MIDI, and images in a large number of formats. And that's just what's supported by QuickTime 2.5. So when you think of a QuickTime movie, you should think of a container that may have any or all of that stuff in it.

A HyperCard stack is also a container for stuff -- buttons, fields, and images -- with a particular structure based on the model of cards and stacks. QuickTime is an open architecture; it can be extended so that QuickTime movies can be structured according to the same model as HyperCard stacks, can contain the same stuff that HyperCard stacks contain, and can have the same basic behaviors. These movies can also contain any or all of the other multimedia stuff if you want it, in color, cross-platform, over an Internet connection, with or without background music, integrated or not integrated with whatever else QuickTime does.

From TidBITS-329 ( May 1996 )

HyperCard and QuickTime -- Almost overlooked in the Internet-hype of WWDC was a significant public statement on the future of HyperCard and QuickTime. Despite recent signs of life and a steadfast following, HyperCard has had a moribund reputation for several years as its multimedia capabilities were eclipsed by products like Director and SuperCard. (Though HyperCard remains one of the most useful prototyping tools around.)

At WWDC, Apple showed running demos of HyperCard 3.0, and the biggest surprise is that the new version is built around QuickTime 3.0. Essentially, every HyperCard stack becomes a QuickTime movie, and is playable in any application that can handle QuickTime, including MoviePlayer, Netscape plug-ins, Cyberdog, and word processors. Using QuickTime finally gives HyperCard completely integrated color capabilities as well as cross-platform support (QuickTime is already well established on Windows). According to the presentation, existing HyperCard externals will continue to be usable and there will be Internet-savvy media handlers giving HyperCard (and QuickTime) the ability to use remote content. Both QuickTime 3.0 and HyperCard 3.0 are scheduled for release in spring of 1997.

Dow Jones Business News -- July 2, 1996

Apple Computer Inc. bought an internal site license for Allegiant Technologies Inc.'s Marionet software, a toolkit for scripting custom Internet applications and hybrid multimedia titles.

In a press release, the companies said the Marionet technology provides scripted access to common Internet protocols from within many popular authoring and productivity tools. The software is designed to be used for creating custom Internet or ''intranet'' solutions.

Apple intends to use Marionet in conjunction with its own HyperCard and AppleScript technologies to create utilities that facilitate management and rapid updating of World Wide Web sites and to develop custom intranet solutions for internal use.

The Marionet license only covers internal distribution, the companies said. A separate liense would be necessary should Apple create a Marionet-enabled application for redistribution to its end users.

As part of the agreement, Apple will include a trial version of Marionet on a future Apple Developer CD so that Apple developers can experience Marionet themselves.

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