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Arrangement of tinker toys

Since I been trying out my.wordpress.net I’ve been thinking a lot about this.

Of course Alan has been there first: This is Not a Blog | wordpress as the new hypercard?

I spent a lot of time with HyperCard over the years1. Described as a “software erector set” and “programming for the rest of us” it was one of the inspirations for the web.

I used it for toys, tools and fun for pupils at school. I also made many utilities for myself. These did not need to be polished, just fit closely to my needs and tweak-able. For many years I used HC every day.

HyperCard could make mac application, but you could also run stacks (documents) in the application by itself.

Over the last few days I’ve been playing with my.wordpress.net which is a complete private WordPress in your browser. One of the limitations, at the moment, is that you get 1 instance per device/browser. I found that using Safari’s Add to Dock… feature, which gives you a single site application you can click and launch from the dock, allowed me to have several copies of WordPress that ran with a click. It began to feel a bit like HyperCard.

Like HyperCard you can edit the code while running. I mentioned here I was able to swap out the lyrics of the hello dolly plugin in a minute. Of course more complex things would need more skills, and php & javascript seem a lot more complex than HyperTalk to me.

The other thing HyperCard was great at was sharing ‘extensions’ external functions (XFCN) and commands (XCMD), similar to WordPress plugins.

At the moment My WordPress feels as it if useful for playing around, testing things quickly & safely and maybe making utilities for yourself.

I’ve already used it to explore a problem I didn’t understand, made a couple of test utilities and experimented with a them or two. This was much quicker than using the web.

I suspect that a ‘real’ single site generator app might give more options than Safari. One of the annoying things for me was that the open in New Tabs links in WordPress spawned windows all over the place. Switching from other apps became difficult. I got round that problem by asking claude.ai to create a simple plugin that switch all the links to same window. This now really reminds me of stacks.

Wondering

My WordPress makes it really easy to edit all of the WordPress files. That feels a little dangerous to me. I wonder if a better approach might be to have a wee plugin to add code when you need too. Sort of like functions.php in a child theme but theme independent. A system for JavaScript files could site in that plugin folder too? Both could be easily edited in the browser and keep me away from more risky files. I am pretty sure there are already plugins out there that do this.

Another application this reminds me of is TiddyWiki which I use to keep various notes. TiddyWikis are single html files. I have multiple wikis that run from the TiddlyDesktop: A custom desktop browser for TiddlyWiki 5 and TiddlyWiki Classic. I could imaging something similar for My WordPress.

Other things in the mix include:

  • WordPress Playground which I’ve not used for more than a few minute, I am not sure what the differences between the playground and my wordpress are? It looks like my WordPress is for longer term ideas.
  • Blueprints Blueprints are json files used to set up a WordPress Playground instance. I briefly tried Pootle Playground – WordPress Blueprint Configurator which easily produced a blueprint linked to playground and when opened started WordPress installed the themes and plugins I had added like magic. I think this would be a great way to share apps. Not sure if you can use it with My WordPress? yet?
  • Playground has a setting to set up a multi-site. That might be interesting in My WordPress…
  • Telex, Describe your idea. Telex will build a WordPress block or theme for you.

Finally:

Next up, we’re going to add peer-to-peer sync, version control integration, and cloud publishing so other people can access it.

WordPress Everywhere | Matt Mullenweg

Featured image Tinker Toys by Flood CC-BY-NC-ND

  1. My favourite piece of software, followed closely by SuperCard. ↩︎

8 thoughts on “WordPress, the new HyperCard?”

  4. LiveCode, the New HyperCard, now 25 years old and still largely unnoticed.

    https://www.livecode.com/
    A high level, multiplatform, XTalk development environment.
    And now, with CBD added! Oh, sorry, I meant A.I. assistants (yeah, yeah…)

    NOT an ad – I’m just a user of the product.
    Let me sing you the song of my people…

    First there was HyperCard, thanks Bill Atkinson (R.I.P)
    Introduced in 1987, it was last updated in 1998, and last sold in 2004.
    While it was deliberately limited, (thanks Steve Jobs) it was amazingly useful. Not a true development environment, nevertheless professionals used it, and the groundbreaking adventure game “Myst” – produced by Rand and Robyn Miller of Cyan, was created with it and used “extensions” to allow it to be colorized.

    As a personal aside, for me, it was the software parallel of the Macintosh – it allowed me to do things I never could have done without it, and provided experiences that allowed me to go beyond my limitations and do more than I ever thought I could.

    Then, in 1989, there was SuperCard thanks Bill Appleton – a different Bill, although they could have shared the same monogrammed towels.

    SuperCard was a “high level development environment” which did create real Mac applications. It had compatibility with Hypercard stacks, x-commands, and HyperTalk, was fully color and allowed you to make any kind of human interface element from buttons to floating palettes that he Mac supported.

    As another personal note, I made a living in the ’90s as a programmer, mostly using SuperCard, to create educational and corporate programs as well as art installations.

    SuperCard was beloved by many, but with a financially tumultuous history, multiple acquisitions, the advent of OS 10, and the death of Scott Simon who was the owner/developer at the time, SuperCard became another 32-bit application doomed to extinction. Along with everything I wrote with it.

    No matter for me, as the ’90s ended, my job description changed from software guy to systems guy. But my fascination for the “style and approach” of HyperCard/SuperCard never diminished.

    HyperCard begat MetaCard (a clone) which begat Revolution, which became LiveCode, first appearing in 2001. LiveCode could open HyperCard Stacks (I think it still can…) and uses it’s own XTalk variant. It’s fully internet aware, multi platform (Mac, Windows, Linux and sadly, an unmaintained Raspberry Pi ARM version). It is wildly capable – beyond the space available to describe here. I suggest you look them up – the best software company in Glasgow.

    I’ve taught Intro to Programming to High School kids with it. Hired developers (hey, I’m too busy) to write corporate applications with it. Used it just as I did with HyperCard – to create one-off utilities that get something done with it. Still the same metaphor as HyperCard. Yep, lately the addition of A.I. to the product has been a new aspect. No opinion there yet.

    Loved by many, ignored or unknown to many more.

    Cheers….

    Reply

    • Hi William, Thanks nice concise history of x-talks. I have the same feelings for HC & SuperCard as yourself. Loved them for years. Still read the SC mailing list. I have followed the Metacard, Revolution, Livecode progress from a distance. Occasionally running them when the price was right for me. Unfortunately that was not too often. The licensing seemed quite confusing last time I looked. The secondary schools in North Lanarkshire, where I was a primary teacher, did use Livecode for a while as a teaching too.

      Reply

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