I think that if hypercard had been the engine of the web instead of html/css, we would have had the current state of the web (ie. with client-side dynamic applications) a lot sooner.
Wether Hypertalk would have been a better choice than javascript to program the web, this is another story :)
For the curious, the Hypertalk entry in wikipedia contains a lot of code examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTalk
But is this a good thing? After all, the web started and succeeded as a simple platform for passive document-browsing rooted in markup (SGML) technologies. There never was a need for a new general-purpose app platform (because that existed, and still exists, in the form of operating systems). Arguably, seeing the web as primarly an app delivery platform is what ruined the web even.
As to HyperTalk, it's an odd language for sure (did a HyperCard app for budget control in an agency around 1992), but listening to Bill Atkinson is still very inspiring.
There's a whole stream of forgotten technologies (server push images? Image maps? Html layers?) that show this.
Don't believe this rose tinted view of the old web. There was lots wrong with it and the current web stack is much, much better.
(Also SGML was never deployed as part of the web)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783227
>In fact, one of the earliest tools that enabled anyone, even children, to author and publish their own interactive dynamic web applications with graphics, text, and even forms and persistent databases, was actually based on HyperCard and the MacHTTP/WebStar web server on the Mac:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226209
>One of the coolest early applications of server side scripting was integrating HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar, such that you could publish live interactive HyperCard stacks on the web! Since it was based on good old HyperCard, it was one of the first scriptable web authoring tools that normal people and even children could actually use!
MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton, and LiveCard HyperCard stack publisher:
CGI and AppleScript:
http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1...
>Cal discusses the Macintosh as an Internet platform, then describes how you can use the AppleScript language for writing CGI applications that run on Macintosh servers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865263
MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton! He was also VP of Engineering at Quarterdeck, another pioneering company.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110705053055/http://www.astron...
http://infomotions.com/musings/tricks/manuscript/0800-machtt...
http://tidbits.com/article/6292
>It had an AppleScript / OSA API that let you write handlers for responding to web hits in other languages that supported AppleScript.
I used it to integrate ScriptX with the web:
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/scriptx/scriptx-www.htm...
https://medium.com/@donhopkins/1995-apple-world-wide-develop...
The coolest thing somebody did with WebStar was to integrate it with HyperCard so you could actually publish live INTERACTIVE HyperCard stacks on the web, that you could see as images you could click on to follow links, and followed by html form elements corresponding to the text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, drop down menus, scrolling lists, etc in the HyperCard stack that you could use in the browser to interactive with live HyperCard pages!
That was the earliest easiest way that non-programmers and even kids could both not just create graphical web pages, but publish live interactive apps on the web!
Using HyperCard as a CGI application
http://aaa-proteins.uni-graz.at/HyperCGI.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20021013161709/http://pfhyper.co...
http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/cgi-and-applescript/1...
https://web.archive.org/web/19990208235151/http://www.royals...
What was it actually ever used for? Saving kid's lives, for one thing:
>Livecard has exceeded all expectations and allows me to serve a stack 8 years in the making and previously confined to individual hospitals running Apples. A whole Childrens Hospital and University Department of Child Health should now swing in behind me and this product will become core curriculum for our medical course. Your product will save lives starting early 1997. Well done.
- Director, Emergency Medicine, Mater Childrens Hospital
He paid me $1500 to port it. That was my first paid software job. It led to an internship somewhere else and the rest is history.
Funny enough, while trying to find information about it, I found a Usenet post in Google Groups where the professor mentioned my name in 1993 about the stack. I never knew he posted about me before today.
What's the reference you've found on Usenet?