I couldn't agree more. HyperCard changed the world, and it's a tragedy that it was abandoned.
The idea that QuickTime¹ would be the runtime for HyperCard 3² — or from a different perspective, that HyperCard stacks would be just another media type — was extremely clever. We'd³ previously experimented with specific interactive functionality, but QTi generalized interactive media capabilities in a technically-interesting way that would greatly amplify both what HyperCard and what QuickTime were capable of.
The 1996 WWDC session Hypercard 3.0: The Phoenix Rises was electric. Here's a report from that session, complete with a response from the awesome Kevin Calhoun. http://folkstream.com/muse/teachhc/hc3.html
> It would be great to know and see what it was going to be all about!
From an authoring POV, it was "just" HyperCard with super-powers. But from a distribution POV, the magic was that stacks would work anywhere that Movies worked — web pages, email, documents, applications (imagine GUIs composed of "micro-stack" controls), etc.
> The 1996 WWDC session Hypercard 3.0: The Phoenix Rises was electric. Here's a report from that session, complete with a response from the awesome Kevin Calhoun. http://folkstream.com/muse/teachhc/hc3.html
The idea that QuickTime¹ would be the runtime for HyperCard 3² — or from a different perspective, that HyperCard stacks would be just another media type — was extremely clever. We'd³ previously experimented with specific interactive functionality, but QTi generalized interactive media capabilities in a technically-interesting way that would greatly amplify both what HyperCard and what QuickTime were capable of.
The 1996 WWDC session Hypercard 3.0: The Phoenix Rises was electric. Here's a report from that session, complete with a response from the awesome Kevin Calhoun. http://folkstream.com/muse/teachhc/hc3.html
> It would be great to know and see what it was going to be all about!
From an authoring POV, it was "just" HyperCard with super-powers. But from a distribution POV, the magic was that stacks would work anywhere that Movies worked — web pages, email, documents, applications (imagine GUIs composed of "micro-stack" controls), etc.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime#QuickTime_interactiv... ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard#HyperCard_3.0 ³ Royal "we", my specific role was evangelism