Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS

donohoe•34 minutes ago

I miss HyperCard and I love projects like this at a nostalgia level - but if you're going to have aspirations that this is useful today (2026) with a real project then its a complete waste of time.

I want HyperCard where I can build out a stack or whatever and actually present it to people as a real and tangible thing. I love living in the past as much as anyone else, but this is a little disappointing.

RodgerTheGreat•25 minutes ago

I use personal applications written in Decker on a daily basis.

There are over 300 games, zines, visual novels, and toys built with Decker on itch.io: https://itch.io/games/tag-decker

Last month saw the first game made entirely in Decker published on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4693460/The_Dreams_in_the...

We are neither living in the past nor wasting our time.

hyperhello•31 minutes ago

HyperCardSimulator.com lets you make and import stacks anonymously and link to them online. Enjoy!

tomhow•43 minutes ago

Previously:

Decker: A reincarnation of HyperCard with 1-bit graphics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40292181 - May 2024 (78 comments)

Decker – A HyperCard Replacement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38985409 - Jan 2024 (36 comments)

Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377964 - Oct 2022 (88 comments)

WalterGR•8 minutes ago

Most recently, 27 days ago with 9 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48693273

fastball•about 1 hour ago

If you want the "agentic future" version of this (sorry), tldraw just relased "tldraw offline"[1] which in some ways has a lot of overlap with HyperCard as well.

[1] https://offline.tldraw.com/

WillAdams•13 minutes ago

Is there a scripting language for this? That was what really differentiated HyperCard and made it a replacement for the never-released MacBasic:

https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html

brightstar18•about 1 hour ago

awesome, already love the detailed feature set. one thing I'd love is the option to change themes. for eg. i'd like a more modern theme if i want to create a presentation and send it across. retro is a bit of a cognitive overload on users who are now habitual of navigating a different type of UI.

thataccount•about 2 hours ago

Decker is neat. I was in the process of using it the other day, but discovered it did not have much by way of font size adjustment in text fields. You could make a heading, but I didn't see a way to make it bigger or larger than simply being a heading.

RodgerTheGreat•about 2 hours ago

Decker fonts are composed of fixed-size bitmaps. The included example "fonts.deck" has a variety of additional fonts to choose from in various sizes, and an editor:

https://beyondloom.com/decker/fonts.html

We also recently gained a library for working with vector-based text:

https://beyondloom.com/decker/hershey.html

thataccount•about 1 hour ago

Ah. That would have been good to know! I was looking mostly in the interface for a font size tweaker of some kind.

philips•about 1 hour ago

Looks awesome! Very oddly super small window for it in iOS safari though.

RodgerTheGreat•about 1 hour ago

Decker prefers integral upscaling. On most browsers, "Decker -> Fullscreen" in the menu (or "app.fullscreen:1" from a script) will enable "stretching", but this feature is not supported by Safari on iPhones last time I tested.

Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS

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