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Jeanne's House o' HyperCard:


Tricks of the HyperTalk Masters

edited by the Waite Group
Hayden Books 1989
ISBN 0-672-48431-5

Tricks of the HyperTalk Masters was one of the Waite Group's multi-author opuses. I wrote two chapters for it: one on general scripting, one on visual effects. The book was published in 1989, which means it predates HyperCard 2.0 (let alone 2.3)...back in those single-window, modal-script-editor, no-external-windows days, many things about stack development were different.

Still, the material in those two chapters may still be useful. The visual effect command hasn't changed, except for the addition of a few options; and the underpinnings of HyperTalk haven't gone away.

The book has been out of print for years, but you may be able to find a copy anyway. Here's a table of contents:

  1. Techniques for Stack Development: Notes from the Scripting Battlefields by Jeanne DeVoto
  2. ScrollJump: Jumping Through a Stack Gently by Mitchell Waite
  3. Dueling Scroll: Synchronizing Multiple Scrolling Fields by Mitchell Waite and Ted Jones
  4. Quick Pop-Up Fields: HyperText Pop-Ups With a Twist by Ted Jones
  5. Menu Fields: Draggable, Tear-Off, Auto-Positioning Menus by Jack A. Smith
  6. PolyButtons: Creating Nonrectangular Buttons Mitchell Waite and Ted Jones
  7. Animated Icons and Cursors: Seamless Animation With Icons and Cursors by Jeremy John Ahouse
  8. Animated Fonts: 32,000 Graphic Layers Await You by Mitchell Waite
  9. The Art of Visual Effects: Create a Look and Feel That Dazzles by Jeanne DeVoto
  10. Synching Sight and Sound: From Sound Effects to Music Videos by Mitchell Waite
  11. Developer's Tool Kit: Utilities and Scripts for Better Scripting by Andrew Stone
  12. The Quiz Maker: Create Self-Administering and Self-Grading Exams by Andrew Stone
  13. HyperAnimals: A Game That Learns From the Player by Joseph F. Buchanan
  14. A Grab Bag of Utilities: Snapshots, Printing, Dialer, and More by Ted Jones
  15. Chauffer: A HyperCard-to-CompuServe Front End by Nick Hodge
  16. Benchmarking HyperTalk: Unveiling HyperCard Performance by Mark ^Zimmerman
  17. Large Stacks: Speeding Up Large Stacks by Steven F. Martin
  18. Extending HyperCard with Externals: Filling "Holes" with XCMDs and XFCNs by David P. Sumner
Jeanne A. E. DeVoto jaed@jaedworks.com