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

thataccount

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.

brightstar18

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.

philips

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

fastball

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/

tomhow

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)

donohoe

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.

zeroq

I'm afraid that HyperCard is too old for broader audience to be able to grasp how extraordinary experience it was providing. As a 6-7yo I had a collection of English words, stored with my own definitions and pronunciations, using basic building blocks, and it was as easy and intuitive as writing these words in my notebook. People used the same building primitives to make real games or stuff like accounting applications. And the best part - at that time it didn't looked cheap. This one is really hard to describe - it's the same uncanny valley that makes small village in Fallout 1 feel massive and full of people despite it taking two screens with just few sprites running around, while full blown 3D world of Fallout 3, with real buildings and voice overs felt flat, soulless and empty.

huseyinl

The HyperCard legacy lives on! The self-contained single-file HTML export alone makes this a fantastic medium for web zines and indie games, and the dithered aesthetic gives it immediate charm. Looking forward to diving into Lil.

janci

It seems application state is mainly maintained in the widgets. Reminds me of Delphi. Is there a similar concept for representing state in a well-suited data structures, that can be created and composed visually like the UI widgets?

mbreese

Is there a place these days for interfaces like this? I’m thinking about self contained applications like HyperCard stacks, but also FileMaker databases or even Access databases where we had interfaces linked to a database all as a self contained application. These tools with scripting languages powered a ton of small business applications. I know a lab I worked with was still using FileMaker databases up until a few years ago. These were user developed applications, done by people who may have been a bit technical, but who didn’t to know a full programming language. If you’re a small shop and have a need for a little database, what do you use? Is there a default now? Notion?

josters

This reminds me of LiveCode[1] (aka Revolution and MetaCard) which I’ve used quite a bit about a decade ago. Was also inspired by HyperCard. Just checked their site again and it seems they’ve discontinued the open source version and have pivoted to an AI-assisted drag and drop UI builder. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveCode

proxysna

Never used HyperCard, but from descriptions and screenshots in the article reminds me a lot of Delphi/Pascal/Lazarus IDE’s. Appeal is understandable, because it is so cool to be snore to from a few lines of code to a clickable intractable executable, that is the sort of Feedback loop that I miss in python and go GUI builders that I’ve used previously, and why I keep c inning back to Lazarus.

mempko

Wait, you are telling me people vibe created apps before LLMs? /s This is beautiful. I loved Hypercard when I was a kid. If they added networking to it, it would have been superior to web browsers! Please people, have some joy and stop taking people down a peg for vibe coding apps. Let people have fun again for once.

cure_42

Decker seems like it would have a lot of potential for e-ink devices like the boox note series and such.

carimura

If I could point to two major influences that directed me towards computer engineering it was Hypercard and BBS's.

felixding

Nitpicking: “classic Mac OS” not “classic macOS”

hallole

Woah, this is something I've wanted for forever! Only, without the "quirky" aspects of its design. I can appreciate the charm, but it does obstruct utility, and this sort of tool -- a super-general digital whiteboard -- would be oh so useful. I never knew of its predecessor, "HyperCard," either, which looks to be essentially what I wish for, only modernized.

madhu_ghalame

Really love this! Simple idea, powerful execution