Art Bits from HyperCard

Art Bits from HyperCard

(archives.somnolescent.net)

by TigerUniversity

oidar

Archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260306224042/https://archives....

ascorbic

Ah, that'll be useful. The hardest thing about adding a new project to my site is finding a new HyperCard/System 6 icon. https://mk.gg/

bensyverson

Wow, I must be in my 40s because I love your site :)

heliumtera

Hey, I really loved the fonts on your website.

For the past 10 years I've being using terminus bitmap font, so I have strong opinions about it. The only reason I prefer Firefox is because it supports bitmap.

Reading your website on my phone made my day! Lovely fonts/aesthetics

zahlman

I get that I'm critiquing you within your apparent wheelhouse, but this aesthetic also matters a lot to me.

  img[data-astro-cid-vnzlvqnm] {
    width: 48px;
    height: 48px;
    image-rendering: pixelated;
    object-fit: contain;
    margin-bottom: 0.5rem;
  }

I understand the goal here, but it works really poorly IMO when the source images are generally 32x32 (and some of them are smaller to arbitrary degrees because the content has been cropped — this doesn't seem to distort aspect ratios, but e.g. the "eye" icon gets stretched to fill the space, and thus scales with a bespoke 48/25 factor). Meanwhile the hover cursor looks pixel-precise, but definitely too big compared to the icons. (It seems to have been scaled 2x ahead of time, from an authentic 16x16.) The background scale is also pixel-precise (I don't know whether it's 2x scaled just to scale it, or to look like a 2x2 "pattern") so the difference in approaches is just really jarring to me.

(I think the font is also doing some anti-aliasing; probably can't really control that. It looks really cool, though.)

I would really recommend not cropping to content, and either using integer-scale boxes or just accepting some sampling interpolation. Or just leaving everything at 1:1 scale. It'd be noticeably physically smaller than authentic for typical desktop displays, but that's just hardware doing what it does. (And as it stands, it might be bigger than authentic!) Bonus points for a `@media` query on device resolution to make the choice.

(Edit: after reading through https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/P... I'm not really sure Firefox is working as advertised...? But I think x1.5 scaling for pixel art is always going to involve compromise.)

doawoo

We need a modern HyperCard, I want to see more creative computing

afandian

I recently enjoyed this episode of Mac Folklore Radio.

A surprising prescient discussion on HyperCard and hypertext.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mac-folklore-radio/id1...

simquat

I'm working on it, Breadboard[0] is a visual app builder that mixes Figma-style UI design with Shortcuts-style logic.

[0] https://breadboards.io/

oidar

Have you seen Decker: https://beyondloom.com/decker/

hendersonreed

there's a great blogpost explaining the creator's inspirations in hypercard also: https://beyondloom.com/blog/sketchpad.html

hyperhello

There is this thing called the World Wide Web that does most of that.

escapecharacter

in progress ;)

colinbartlett

HyperCard was definitely my first taste of what would become my career in web software development.

I wasn't a Mac user at home, but school had them and I absolutely loved what I could create with HyperCard, there was nothing like it on Windows.

I also recall switching to SuperCard simply for the COLOR support, what a time.

alexpotato

My favorite fact about HyperCard was that the game Myst was built using HyperCard:

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst#:~:text=The%20game%20was%...

schlauerfox

now I need an emoji font in this 90s style of those 'small treasures'

Crafted by Rajat

Source Code

hckrnws

Art Bits from HyperCard